Page 64 of Hate Me

Under other circumstances, that would’ve been hot beyond belief. To be honest, it had made me hard. Rough sex had been our thing, so it was probably some residual thing from that.

But the intent there had been bitter to say the least.

She was closing herself off to us.

After all this time, this was how she’d come back to us.

I fucking hated it.

In the few times I’d allowed myself to think about her, about what it would be like if we ever crossed paths again, none of it had played out like the brutal reality that had slapped me in the face last night.

The conflict warring within both of us.

It had fucked with me so much that I’d walked in there wanting to hate her and unload all of it that I’d been bottling up all this time. Yet, the moment I’d laid eyes on her and she’d looked out at me with those emerald-green pools our connection had flooded over me, drowning all the rest out. All the distance. All the heartache. All the disappointment, betrayal, anger, and grief. All I’d wanted was to reach out and touch her, make sure she was real, that she was really here.

But she’d had such a wall up, I hadn’t been able to get much from her. The longer I’d been locked in that room with her, the more the need had grown to connect with her again, to sink back into what used to be between us.

All I’d managed to get was something physical, but that had even been a muted version of what it had been when we’d come together before and unleashed like wild things all over one another. Because the passion hadn’t been there—she’d had it locked down and I was gun-shy, holding back in my own way.

I didn’t fucking know what to do with any of it.

I didn’t know what I wanted.

For so long, I hadn’t allowed myself to properly consider the notion of ever being able to have her back with us. So now it had happened, it was one hell of a major mind-fuck.

The fact that she was closing herself off really didn’t help either. It was just making things all the more complicated because I couldn’t see her properly, couldn’t feel her. I couldn’t see who she was now.

A very powerful part of me didn’t want her to leave again. But the other? The other worried that what she’d said was true, about having her back in my life twisting me up again and sending me down a bad track.

“I’m fucking ready for you now, for everything that comes with you, with the four of us being together.”

That was what I’d wanted to scream back at her.

Because that powerful part of me believed it.

But the other part held the doubt and worry that I might not be.

The fact that I was thinking all of this and it was churning me up meant that I wanted it, that the need to have her transcended all that hate.

What you wanted wasn’t always what you needed, though.

“Fuck,” I muttered under my breath.

None of it could even begin to be resolved while she was like this—shutdown and on a rage-filled mission of vengeance and punishment against Jett Bane.

He was all she was seeing right now. And it was clouding everything for her.

Jesus Christ. She was in a real fucking state.

Voices reached me as I made it downstairs to the first floor.

Just the distraction and refocusing I needed right now.

I couldn’t help smiling in spite of everything as I heard Caleb’s coming through.

He was here in the house, back with us.

Well, at least physically.

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