Maybe would even want to see them.
Could I show them to her?
Show her what only I’d ever seen and been repulsed by?
Gina huffed and sent her hair flying over her shoulder. “Will you never forgive me for that little mishap?”
Still waters ran deep, or so they said. But at that moment, I could have throttled her. My body began to shake, the muscles trembling as a rage so acute flushed through me.
“Get out.”
I whispered the words when I wanted to scream them. Whispered them when I wanted them to lash her with the pain and misery she’d reaped on me.
“Nicky,” she chided softly, but her voice was small. A squeak in comparison to her usual strident tones.
“I’m Nicholas. I’m no longer your husband—by your own design. You have no right to be in this apartment anymore, no right to be anywhere near my life.” I gritted my teeth a second before biting out, “The next time you pull a stunt like this, I’ll get a restraining order. You’re the lawyer. You know how this works. Now, get out.”
Her nostrils flared but she scurried to her feet, too audacious to grab the sheets to cover up. I got an eyeful of a body I’d have killed to possess once upon a time, but as I looked at her now, I saw her for what she was.
She-devil.
A demon who sucked the souls from men, all for her own pleasure. Who hurt them without care, without compunction, who tried to take their will from them by using sex against them.
Was it any wonder she’d fucked me up in the head?
Was it any wonder my body responded helplessly to Phoebe and yet, mentally, I couldn’t allow myself more than what we’d experienced in the hall?
Gina had tied sex with manipulation. Wrapped it up with so many knots that it had caught on, infected me, and I was doing the same to Phoebe.
Controlling her through her orgasms.
Making her want me as I tied her pleasure to me.
The thought had me shuddering, but I didn’t allow my body to respond. Didn’t allow my reaction to show, because if I did, Gina might take that as a sign. I didn’t need her to think I wasn’t deadly serious on this score.
I’d tried to be kind, but she’d taken advantage. I had more than enough proof to take to the police, and getting a restraining order with my family’s pull would be nothing difficult.
When she was dressed in a black pantsuit, she ducked down and grabbed a pair of five-inch stilettos. She gripped the straps with her fingers then strolled around the bed.
I didn’t hear what she said, but she whispered something to Phoebe that had her brow furrowing as she flashed a glance at me. I didn’t look at her. Instead, I stared at my bitch ex and watched as she sashayed toward me now that she knew she had my full attention.
I backed off to give her space to leave and followed her down the hall to the front door.
“You come again and I’ll call the cops,” I repeated, my voice cold with the bitterness that came from years of hatred.
“Oh, I’ll come again,” she replied, her eyes narrowed, her tone a sickening croon that made me want to snarl at her. “You’re mine, Nicholas.”
“You tossed me away, Gina,” I countered, pushing myself into her space so that I could tower over her. “And do you know what?” I breathed against her mouth, sensing that she thought I was about to kiss her.
“W-What?” she whispered, pupils blown with a messed-up mixture of lust and smug satisfaction.
“It was the kindest thing you’ve ever done. Now, fuck off.”
Her mouth gaped wide in bemusement, but before she could say a word, before she had a second to compose herself, I dragged open the door then grabbed her arm and hauled her out. She let out a screech as I moved, but I ignored it and slammed the door in her face. For a few seconds, she bashed her hands against it, screamed my name a few times, but then I heard her cursing under her breath before she took off.
I released a relieved sigh and pressed my forehead to the cool door.
Overheated and uneasy, I wasn’t sure if I was about to be sick or not. My stomach was certainly churning like I’d drunk a gallon of OJ and milk mixed together.
“She wants you back.”
I rolled on my forehead to look at her. Her arms were folded around her belly, and she looked so fucking young that I felt ancient.
“She wants what she can’t have. Always has, always will.”
Though I was surprised that she wanted me, even with the scars. Not that she knew how bad they were. She hadn’t seen them since those first hours at the hospital.
“What did she whisper to you?”
She gulped. “It doesn’t matter.”
I laughed and the sound was cruel and hard. “Doesn’t it?” I curled my hands into fists. “Let me guess. Did she tell you that I’m a monster?”
Her brow puckered. “She’s crazy. You should have heard the stuff she was telling me.”
“You didn’t believe her?”
She snorted, and the sound was so down to earth that I stared at her intently for a handful of seconds. Long enough that she turned pink. “No, Nicholas,” she told me softly. “I didn’t. She’s sick, isn’t she?”
“She’s high-functioning, but yes. She’s sick.” Fuck, who was I to judge? Wasn’t I sick in the head too?
“Because of Rosa?” she murmured, and the fact she knew my daughter’s name? Well, it meant that Gina had tried to tell Phoebe I’d killed our baby girl.
It wasn’t the first time she’d pulled that lie. Only the coroner’s report had my mother looking at me with ease. Yeah, Gina had convinced my mother that I’d—
Fuck.
My tongue felt thick in my mouth as I grated out, “She was insane before, but after Rosa died… yeah. It got worse.” I licked my lips. “SIDS,” I whispered. “One day she was there, the next she wasn’t.”
“I’m so sorry, Nicholas.” The bitch of it was, I heard the sincerity in her voice.
She meant it.
Oh, everyone thought they meant it when they said they were sorry for the passing of a loved one. But Phoebe meant it. Each word was imbued with her sincerity.
I released a breath but fell silent, unsure of what to say.
“She said I killed her, didn’t she?”
“Yes.” Simple. No bullshit.
“She likes to blame me for it.”
“SIDS is impossible to protect against. For the first six months, I was terrified for Scottie—”
My throat felt tight. “I went in there that morning. Saw her. It’s something I live with every day.”
“I can’t imagine,” she replied gently, and I heard the soft padding of her bare feet against the raw oak floorboards. I tensed against what was about to happen, but when her hand pressed to my back, it felt good.
Right.
Like my heart could stop racing now that she touched me.
“What scars, Nicholas?”
This time, I turned my face away from her, but when she pulled at my shirt, dragging it from my waistband, I didn’t stop her.
Her hands touched them first, rubbing over the puckered flesh that was uber-sensitive to the touch. That was hard enough. But for her to see them, it made me feel sick.
They were repulsive.
Repugnant.
Just like me.
A true manifestation of my character.
“What happened?” she breathed.
My throat was tight, but I managed to grate out, “I was faithful to Gina, Phoebe.”
She quieted. Didn’t rush to tell me she believed me, didn’t huff and say she didn’t.
This woman, to whom I’d shown my worst side, didn’t condemn or judge me.
She waited for the full story.
I appreciated that, even if my ego didn’t.
“One night, she accused me of cheating on her. It came out of the blue, and I talked her down. Like I said, she’d been more unstable than ever since we lost Rosa, more erratic, but I understood because mos
t days, I felt insane too.” God, that was an understatement. I’d been sure I was losing my mind every fucking hour of the day. “Then, a few days later, she woke me up with—”
“With?” Phoebe prompted me when I fell quiet.
“She had a tea kettle in her hand. Freshly boiled.” Behind me, Phoebe tensed. “She poured it on my stomach—I was lucky. She was aiming for my cock. That was one target she missed.”
“What the fuck?” Phoebe rasped, and suddenly, I was being hauled around, forced to turn so that my back was against the door and she was there.
In front of me.
Her eyes ablaze, her body tense, throbbing furiously with her anger.
“Why?”
“To clean me.” A hard laugh escaped me. “Sterilize me… in two meanings of the word.”
“I wish I’d torn her hair out while I had the chance.”
I blinked, and found my lips were quirking at the thought of Phoebe, who I’d believed was timid, going Amazonian on my ex-wife’s ass. “Why didn’t you?”
“Because I don’t have the right to—”
“Be possessive of me?” My eyelids felt heavy. “What if I wanted you to?”
She swallowed. “Nicholas, I—”
“You, what?” My skin tingled where her hand rested on my belly. The skin was still red, even after all these years. Some parts were puckered, others were smooth. Where water had trickled down over the contours of my flesh, there were strange scars from where it had puddled and then trailed down like tiny capillaries.
My abdomen, hip, and lower back area were a mess. My butt bore deeper scars where they’d done skin grafts to heal some of the deeper wounds.
But though the scars were revolting, she touched the damaged flesh as though it were healthy.
Like it had been before.
Didn’t it revolt her?
Repulse her?
Even though Gina claimed to want me back, went to these bizarre lengths to entice me, I knew for a fact she’d find them repugnant.
Had I been nuts enough to want her back, I’d have had to accept that she’d never be able to come to terms with what she’d done to me.
And yes, I was aware of the irony in that statement.
Her fingers spread out over my belly, touching me in a place that hadn’t known another’s touch in far too long. But she didn’t stop there. She smoothed her palm over the bumps of my muscles, then reached up to cup my jaw.
“Tell me what happened?”
I swallowed. “Why?”
“Because this is why you’ve been the way you’ve been. It’s why you’ve chosen this path for us. I want to understand before I say yes to anything.” She sucked down a shuddery breath. “You have to understand, Nicholas, I know I’m a pushover.” Her smile was lopsided.
“No. You’re not,” I ground out, hating that she thought that of herself.
“I am. I let my mom push me around, let you push me around—”
“It’s to my shame that you can lump us both together in that sentence.” I sighed and though it was weird for me, strange to initiate contact like that, especially with my scars on display, I tilted forward until my forehead rested against hers.
“Tell me,” she urged, not replying to my comment, and I didn’t blame her. There wasn’t much to say. No apology I could give for the way I’d whipped her with my tongue, lashed her with my actions.
“There isn’t that much to tell. Honestly,” I rasped when she shook her head. “We got a divorce a few months after this happened. She cited cruelty as her reasoning, used a few examples of me going off the rails at her in the aftermath of this.”
She scowled at me. “Didn’t you throw that shit back in her face in court?”
“Why would I?” I shrugged, and at her gasp, shot her a wry look. “I wanted to get divorced. The second she did this, I wanted her out of my life. And I planned for it. The nurses wanted me to have her arrested on domestic abuse charges, but I knew that wouldn’t wash. They even called the cops in, but I told them it was just an accident.
“You have to understand Gina to know what she’s like, Phoebe,” I told her when she gaped at me, stunned by my words. “She’s possessive. She doesn’t give up something that she believes belongs to her unless she’s playing a game. She called for a divorce because she thought it would make me toe the line. She didn’t think it would ever happen.
“And, when I didn’t fight it, didn’t refute her ridiculous claims, just let it go ahead, she couldn’t deal with it. That’s why she keeps coming back around, because her plan didn’t work.” I’d even let it taint my relationship with my parents, had let them believe what they wanted to, to get that poison out of my life.
It was worth it.
And they weren’t worthy of me.
“Not because you want her to?” Phoebe asked, her voice small.
And there it was.
The reason.
Whatever bullshit Gina had spewed in Phoebe’s ear, it had found its mark.
“Phoebe,” I chided. “You’ve felt them, but it’s time you looked at them. Maybe you won’t be able to stand the sight of them, of me, after you look. But Gina? Gina, who values the superficial over everything else?” I shook my head. “She doesn’t want me for me. She wants me because I’m the one who got away.”
She licked her lips, and then she broke my heart when her eyes welled with tears. “I’m so sorry you had to go through that.”
I blew out a breath. “I’m not going to lie. It’s messed me up, Phoebe. I’m not a nice man.”
That had her gnawing on the inside of her cheek. “I know you’re not, but I like you anyway.”
“Does that make you or me crazy?”
She surprised me by smirking. “I think it makes us both a little crazy.” She pulled back after sucking down some air, then murmured, “Okay, you think this is a breaking point. It isn’t. Let me see, and we can move on from this.”
There was so much to move on from. So much she didn’t know about yet, and so much I couldn’t tell her, but this was phase one. An unexpected phase, because I’d never anticipated any of this happening, but if it helped me toward my end goal? I wasn’t about to complain.
Phoebe wasn’t Gina.
Not in looks or temperament.
I’d done her a disservice all those months ago by lumping them together in the same box, by believing they were both shallow bitches just because, with their beauty, they could make any man fall to their knees.
Phoebe was good people. She was loving and nurturing, a hard worker, dedicated and strong.
Gina was a backstabbing narcissist. She only cared about herself, her wants, her feelings. In her mind, she’d lost Rosa. Not me. Like I didn’t count because I was only her father. Like my grief didn’t matter.
But it did.
It had forged me into the shit heap of humanity that stood here before a woman who was far too good for me.
Christ, I felt small.
So fucking small, and so imperfect and revolting at that moment.
Her hands moved the hem of my shirt out of the way, and I had to close my eyes, had to hide from her expression as she took me in, in all my ugliness.
When she didn’t gasp or rush off to puke, I eventually had to look at her, had to see what she was thinking, but all I saw was her looking at me with such a well of sadness in her soul that I didn’t know what to make of it.
“They’re bad,” she admitted, making my heart sink. Then she reached up and cupped my cheek again. “But they’re not as bad as you think they are.”
I remembered them from after the accident—bright red, oozing pus after they got infected. There were smooth bits and crater-like flesh that had taken the brunt of the boiling water. Some parts were my natural tan, others bright pink even after all this time.
They were bad, but was I about to complain that she didn’t think so?
Did I look like a fucking idiot?
Instead, I reached up and cupped her wrist.
It hurt me to say this, hurt me to take that step forward, but I had to. Phoebe was in the dark here. She’d been dragged into my world without her consent. I’d blackmailed her into being here, dammit.
This was on me.
Not her.
I swallowed down my terror and whispered, “I need you, Phoebe.”
Her shoulders dropped at that and her eyes rounded in terror. “You need me?” she retorted, like she couldn’t believe it.
And, God help me, I knew we really needed to work on her confidence.
“Like I need air to breathe,” I admitted, like I was confessing to murder in a priest’s confessional.
“W-Why? I’m nobody.”
I shook my head. “You’re not nobody. You’re everything.”
Her bottom lip quivered, then she whispered, “I-I don’t want to not touch you anymore. When you walk away from me, when you leave me to just come and I can’t touch you, you make me feel cheap, Nicholas. I can’t handle that. Won’t handle that.”
“I wouldn’t let you,” I replied huskily, letting my thumb rub the back of her hand, and Christ, it killed me to lay this all out on the line, but I had to, because she was right. What kind of relationship would we have with me bullying her all the damn time? With me watching her get off, reveling in her pleasure, but never letting her touch me?
I wanted her.
So fucking badly I could barely see straight.
I’d stalked her to keep her safe, and this time, I had to keep her safe from me but I couldn’t.
Wouldn’t.
Because now, I wasn’t the biggest danger to her. If anything, she was dangerous to me.
She could break me.
Rupture me into a thousand pieces, shred me to nothing, destroy me, and I would have no choice but to let her.
“If you’re not repulsed—”
She grunted. “You’re beautiful, Nicholas. Beautiful. Sure, this is a little mar on all that perfection, but you’re human. And because you’re human and not a fallen angel, that means I can touch you without fear of getting burned.”
I believed her. Those words ripped away the shroud of fear that had been clouding me, that had stopped me from taking what was mine.
A growl escaped me, one that throbbed with the longing I felt for her. The need that encapsulated every ounce of sentiment she dragged from me, both willing and unwilling.
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