He immediately pulls me close to him and wraps his arms around me.
“Tell me you don’t remember,” he murmurs into my ear. “Tell me I’m the only one.”
“You. It’s always you. All I remember.”
“Please tell me that he’s no longer in your head. Tell me it’s me,” he pleads. I’ve never heard him beg before, but if this is what it sounds like, it feels like it makes my heart beat out of my chest.
“It is you,” I whisper. I turn around to face him and place my hand on his cheek. He’s gazing down at the sheets, unable to look me in the eyes. “Look at me, Phoenix.”
It takes him a while to face me. “I did it for you.”
“I know,” I say, crawling closer to him.
“I don’t want you to think of him. Ever again.” He grinds his teeth, still out of breath from what he just did. “I don’t give a damn if that means that you’ll hate me for the rest of your life. As long as I’m the only one on your damn mind, I am fucking okay with that, all right?”
“Shh …” I say, so tired I could fall asleep right here in his arms. “It’s okay.”
“I’m a bad liar, but you know that already. So I’m just going to tell you straight up. I can’t stop fucking thinking about you, and it’s tearing me apart. I want to hate you, Princess, I really do. But you’re making it impossible, okay?”
I blink away the tears. “I know exactly how you feel.”
“We’re sick,” he says, shaking his head.
“Sick motherfuckers,” I say, and he laughs a little.
He grabs my hand and pulls it up to his lips, gently placing a kiss on top. “I miss what we had.”
“So do I, Miles. So do I.”
“Don’t call me that,” he says. “I hate that fucking name. It’s not who I am.”
“It is who you are to me. You’ll always be Miles. My Miles.”
He smiles and caresses my cheek and then leans in to press a kiss on my lips. The kiss is painful and soothing at the same time because I do care about him … and after everything we’ve been through, I still want him. But it’s bad and all kinds of fucked up. We’re fucked up.
But I want him. I want him so damn much. I want him more than a heroin addict wants her next fix. His dark, indecent love … I’m addicted to it.
“Fuck it. I don’t give a damn anymore,” he whispers against my lips. “If you hate me, so be it. I did what I had to do to get him off your mind. I am the only thing you should be thinking about. Period.”
“I know,” I say, rubbing my face against his chest. His smell is so familiar, it reminds me of what we used to be like, and it soothes me. He soothes me. Everything he does, it’s always been because of me. Even when he said he hated me and wanted to hurt me, it was only because I betrayed him and made him feel powerless. But he never stopped loving me.
There is always a fine line between love and hatred. The more we love a person, the more we can hate them when they do us wrong.
I’ve done Phoenix so wrong that I don’t deserve him.
And yet, he’s here, comforting me in my own bed as we try to make amends with each other.
It’s only fair if I do my part, too.
So I turn to him and make him look at me, so he’ll know I mean it. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For doing that. What you just did.”
“I did something unspeakable,” he says.
“But you did it for me. To take the bad memories away.” I press a kiss on his lips, firmly setting my love for him in his heart. And as I take a short breath between our kisses, I repeat, “Thank you.”
CHAPTER 28
VANESSA
I wake up in the middle of the night. I don’t know how long I’ve slept, but gazing at the clock on the wall, I see it’s been a very long time, and it scares me. Was I that tired? I must’ve been to have slept the entire day and night.
When I look beside me, Phoenix is lying next to me, his arms partially wrapped around my waist. His dark hair messily falls down his face, covering the piercing in his eyebrow. For a second, I just look at him, admiring the view. He looks beautiful in this quiet bedroom … when he’s not trying to kill me.
I think back on tonight, of the moment he came into the room and fucked me raw. It was emotionally draining, to say the least. Tears still stain my cheeks, and when I feel my own skin, it’s still red and swollen from the fights. He choked me to erase the memories I had. Should I be happy or should I be mad? Only now that I’m fully awake do I grasp what he did, and it creates a lump in my throat that I just can’t seem to swallow down.
It’s so wrong. What I feel for him. What he does to me. What we put each other through.
This isn’t what I had imagined for myself, for my future. For us.
And watching him lie there in my bed as if we’re some kind of happy couple scares the shit out of me.
I gently crawl out, making sure he doesn’t wake up as I get out of bed. My naked body is the first thing I cover up with a robe I fish from my closet, and then I look at my broken image in the mirror. The woman who used to be something, a star, someone they loved. Now she’s a tearstained fading beauty, losing her cool blond hair, old mascara staining her eyes.
I grab a pad and put some lotion on it, gently dabbing it on my painful skin. Everything hurts. Not just my body, but my heart. My soul. What’s left of me is a muddy mess of broken pieces. And it’s all because of him.
He did this. All of it. In the name of justice. Was it worth it? Did he get what he want? And more importantly, did I get what I wanted when I decided to ruin my own life?
Miserable. That’s what I am. Pathetic.
And I can’t stand that I’ve become this way. All because of him.
I glance over my shoulder at the naked, muscular body hiding underneath a thin strip of blanket. He doesn’t even know what I really feel, what I really think, when I see him, when I see myself. All I see is dirty, disgusting people. And I don’t want to be that way anymore.
But how is that even possible when I’m still near him?
How can we change ourselves if we are who we are because of each other?
It makes me hate him so much more.
But I hate myself even more for loving him.
I get up and roam around the room, searching through all the cabinets and even his clothes. I find what I’m looking for inside his wallet, right beside a picture of me when I was only sixteen. God, I looked so different back then. Still innocent. Still untainted.
I take the key from his wallet and throw the wallet back on the sheets. Using my mouth, I pry it into the cuffs and turn. Just a click and the cuffs open up. My heart flutters a little at the thought of it being so easy. I take them off and place them on the carpet without making a sound.
I search around the room for his phone, and once I find it, I leave the room and dial 911.
“Hello? Is this the police?” I clear my throat.
“Yes, ma’am, do you have an emergency?”
“I’m being held captive in my own home,” I say with a fake, overly emotional voice. “Please help me.”
“Ma’am, stay put and tell us where you are.”
I give them my address and quickly end the phone call with a whisper saying he can’t hear me speak to them or he’ll kill me. This’ll surely get them to my doorstep quickly. I’ll need them for when Phoenix notices I’m gone … he won’t take it well.
When I peek into the room, I see Phoenix is still fast asleep. He won’t know what I’m about to do. He let his guard down. He fell for my charm, and then my fear. And when I showed him my tears … he succumbed to my love. He lost control over the reins, and now they’re in my hands. Quite literally, actually, as I’m holding the leash that’s still chained to the band around my neck.
With my free hands, I touch the metal, and surprisingly, it doesn’t feel weird anymore. Even if I had the time to search for the key to take this off, I’m not sure I could. I don’t know why … it just feels strange to even think about it.
But I can’t digress. No time to lose when my life is on the line. Even when he says he won’t kill me, I know it’s not true. He has it in him, the power to lose control over himself. All it takes is a snap … and a snap I hold. He still hasn’t asked me something, and if he knows the answer, I won’t see the light of day. I’m sure of it.