Page 80 of Exodus

“Stop it.” He felt that blow to his core because I can feel our foundation crumbling beneath our feet. We never had trust, so it’s giving easily.

“I never trusted you fully, so there’s that.” I glare at him. “I don’t ever want to see you again.”

He grips my arms, his voice barely audible. “If only you meant that.”

“What did you do?” I whisper.

“I did what thieves do. I stole you!” he roars, gripping me tighter. I refuse to look at him. I can’t because I played my part in this too. My knees start to give out as the image of the two of them flashes through my mind.

“Watch it, Tobias, you’re getting emotional,” I say lifelessly. “That’s bad for business.”

I can feel his pain, his devastation, but I refuse to acknowledge it.

“Just . . . give me a chance to talk to them.”

“Go. Talk to them. Handle your business. But say your goodbyes now, I won’t be here when you get back.”

“Don’t even fucking think about it,” he whispers so vehemently that I feel the weight of his threat, but it’s desperation that leaks from it.

“You don’t deserve them. You don’t deserve any of us. You said you would up your game. That’s what I’ve been thinking in the back of my mind this whole time. Remember? I told you that you were getting predictable, and you said you would up your game.” I shake my head. “And boy, did you deliver.”

“This was not a game. And we are not fucking business.” He grips my chin, his jaw set as his eyes flame with determination and hurt as he forces me to face him. “Twenty minutes ago, you knew all too well who you belong to, and with and you still do. Tell me I’m a fool to believe it.”

“You said we can never be.”

He presses in. “We. Fucking. Are.”

I glare up at him, my eyes overflowing. “I’ll never forgive you. They’ll never forgive you.”

“I know.” He bends to catch my gaze. “I may be the villain you fell for, but that doesn’t make me any less the villain. Stay. I’ll be back.”

I stand in the middle of my yard as he disappears into the house. A heartbeat later, I hear his Jag turn over. He speeds away as my legs give out where I stand in the yard, utterly destroyed.

It strikes me then that I’ve never known all-

consuming love until this day, until him, and I’m positive I will never know it like that again. I found my truth in love just seconds before it was ripped from me. A curse, a damning fate, to be in love with a man I was supposed to view as my rival who instead stole my heart.

And he’s just destroyed any trust I might have had for him by laying down all of his cards, and only because his hand was forced.

After hours of staring up at the clouds, I pull myself from the ground, walk upstairs, and begin to pack.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Iwake up in a haze surrounded by drawers full of clothes. My French doors clang against my bedroom wall as the summer breeze drifts through. With the next wind-induced crash against the wall, it’s clear why I woke. They’re still wide open because I spent the majority of the night blaring George Michael’s “Father Figure” throughout the house and back into the woods. I’d been furiously tackling my task of packing when it popped up on one of my playlists, one of my mother’s old favorites. As I listened while ripping through my belongings, it occurred to me just how fantastically fucking fitting it was. A song so utterly symbolic of my relationship with the man who deceived me to my very core, who preyed on my weakened heart at just the right moment, claiming my weakness as his own. And for a brief time, gave me everything I felt I’ve been deprived of. Everything I’ve ever wanted. He played into every one of my romantic fantasies, declared us kindred spirits, worshiped my body, took great pains to handle my heart with the utmost care, pulled me into a living dream and kept me there until I was completely saturated with him, in him, while permeating himself into my fucking soul.

So, for the man who played me so well, I turned it up just to acknowledge his victory. I spelled it out with each lyric that I knew exactly on what level in which he deceived me.

The deepest.

I might not ever have fully trusted Tobias, but I believed enough in his lie to give him the rest of me.

But play he did. And he won with a checkmate to shame all others.

Whether it was deception or not, I may never know, but what I do know is that man now owns it wholly—in a way I can never get back.

“I did what thieves do. I stole you!”

And oh, how he succeeded.

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