Page 39 of Seizing Control: Part One

One that I lost.

Six months have passed since then.

In the blink of an eye.

Yet, slow as a winter’s day.

Contradiction rages within me as I ponder what Dad could possibly want from me after weeks freezing me out. My contemplation of his intentions creates guilt. I’ve been weak. Any pride I may feel at still living—as small as that victory may be considering the scars that mark the passage of time is tainted by my cowardly use of a razor to bleed out my venomous turmoil. Both emotions flood me—regret and self-regard. Like waves they smash into me, then recede, only to sneak attack again.

I steal a peek at Zeke.

My silent treatment is getting to him.

He continues to observe me with beseeching eyes, just like he has for the past half an hour. As always, my heart flips in my chest at the sight of his sorrow. I love him so much—even with his admission that he’s ashamed of some of the things he’s done in Perth and Sydney. Nausea grips me when the photo Nadia showed me pops back into my mind’s eye with the blinding flash of a bad camera shutter.

Zeke.

The gorgeous, tattooed brunette.

Her thighs around his neck.

His palm on her toned stomach.

The man I know wouldn’t get that close to another woman, simply because he wouldn’t want me to get that close to another man. In the same way as he betrayed me with the faked threesome with Honey and Slash, his reasons for training with the brunette are null and void. Excuses or not, the fact remains that Zeke does as he pleases without a second thought over how it will make me feel.

If the shoe was on the other foot...

I swallow deep as an unwanted alternative torments me.

Maybe he wouldn’t care?

Maybe my decision to keep my feelings for Slash to myself is an unnecessary precaution?

Even as I pose the question, I know, deep down in the pit of my stomach, that I’m deluding myself. A pissed-off Ezekiel Miles is a one-man wrecking ball. The moment he feels slighted, all hell breaks loose. His pride is his most important possession—a natural occurrence for a man who has spent his life feeling out of step with the wider world.

Still, I always figured that I was the exception to his ego.

Until he made it clear that I’m not good enough.

Not worthy of being loved properly or publicly.

He’s either ashamed of or afraid of my damage.

And that’s why it was so easy for him to walk away from me three times.

Dad bangs the gavel down on the baseplate as he takes the president’s throne. I jerk in my seat, then immediately regret giving him the reaction he wanted. When my father grins at me, deviousness and glee in his eyes, I school my expression into one of calculated boredom. Across the table, Zeke does the same thing. We lock eyes for a heartbeat. My ex-fiancé blinks once, then looks away. He fixes his full focus on my dad, his hatred for his godfather thick and heavy in the quiet chapel.

“I ’spose you’re wonderin’ why I dragged you both in here?”

Waving my hand down the front of my upper body, I answer his question with sarcasm, “Considering you couldn’t even give me time to change, I figured it must’ve been urgent. Turns out you were just chasing the high of another power trip by refusing to allow me the time to head home to freshen up.”

Zeke reacts like I’ve verbally punched him. Narrowing my gaze, I scan his face for a clue to his odd response. The answer pops into my head as I run through the pot-shot aimed at my father.

He didn’t like that I called Slash’s house my home.

As much as upsetting Zeke gives me a little jolt of satisfaction, it also makes me sad.

Things didn’t have to be this way.

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