Page 61 of Tempting Fate

I will not allow her to get to the point where cutting her flesh becomes her coping strategy. If that means I feel the full extent of her wrath right now, if it splashes over everyone in the compound while I try to reach her soft centre, then so be it. It’s been more than five years of silent struggle between us. Half-truths and secrets on both sides. White lies. Outright bullshit. And the time has come for her to tell me the whole story of her relationship with Alex back then.

For four years, I’ve allowed her to keep me in the dark.

To evade the reason, she feels guilty over what happened with Alex.

To avoid my own culpability in it all.

Another reason I haven’t pushed is her father and his propensity to indulge Lily’s dark side. He encourages all five of his children to swallow their pain—like he did after Scarlett died. It’s not healthy. It creates more problems than it solves. But it works for him because he can continue hiding from his own fuck ups. He can minimise his betrayals. Excuse his disloyalty with a veneer of shame and unspoken blame.

With the way things are between me and him at the moment, I can see Brutus making things worse than usual for Lily, just to prove some inane point. He won’t move to protect his daughter from herself. He’ll press her buttons, drive her to complete collapse.

Anything to take the attention off him.

“Metukà shelì… sweet thing.”

Lily ignores me.

I sit uselessly on the bed while she pulls the drawers open to grab a razor back sports top and a pair of yoga pants. Once she’s dressed, I watch her pile her hair on her head and secure it with the hair tie she keeps around her wrist. The boxers and t-shirt she wore last night are dropped with a defiant huff onto the back of the chair I use to keep my worn clothes off the floor.

When Lily makes a move toward the door, her cuts and bruises on display, I step in front of her. As she offers me a sneer, I fold my arms over my chest. “Are you gonna ask for my side of this or have you jumped to all the conclusions you need and found me guilty already?”

A flicker of remorse crosses her face that she quickly masks. “There’s only one conclusion to be made… you can’t handle this.”

“Nah. It’s not the bruises I can’t handle.” Although she gestured at her body while accusing me of not being able to handle her, I lean forward and touch her temple. “It’s the fact you won’t let me in your head that hurts me.” A shudder runs the length of her lithe frame as I drag her over to the recliner and trap her between my legs once I’ve perched on the arm. “You wanna talk about trust, Lily… how’s about you trust me with what’s goin’ on inside your mind? How’s about you realise that he might be your nightmare, but I’m your reality, and I can help you fight back? Talkin’ to each other, leanin’ on each other—that’s the only way I’m gonna know if it’s right for me to fuck you while you’re swollen and bruised and bleeding.”

My words hit home, causing her legs to come close to buckling beneath her. I curl my fingers around the back of her thighs to hold her upright and angle a look at her face to see how she’s going to react.

Regret invades her expression.

Lily forces it down.

Guilt makes her eyes gleam.

She fights it back.

Fury settles across her face like a second skin, and I’m forced to admit that this is going to turn nuclear before I have a hope of her accepting my straight talk.

Lily swipes the last of her tears away, then glowers at me with absolute defiance.

She all but spits her next words at me. “You can fuck right off with your psychological mumbo jumbo. I’m not the one with the problem here… that’s you.”

I can’t hide the way I flinch at the hatred in her tone.

She drops my gaze and hugs herself around the waist.

“You’re about to take this too far,” I warn, even as the voice in my head shouts at me that this is the wrong approach to take with my woman. “Maybe you should go shoot up the range to calm down?”

“The only thing that’ll calm me down is my fiancé not going soft when he looks at me.” As she retorts, I see the pain in her eyes. I fucked up. My refusal to touch her after she opened up to me has battered Lily’s confidence, and there’s no way I can fix it—except to wait out the hurt I caused, then try to talk to her again. “You might think I’m ruined, Ezekiel.” Lily snorts after she pronounces my full name like a curse. “But I’ll have you know that I can find plenty of other men to fuck me if you can’t keep it up.”

After shoving my chest with both hands, Lily steps out of my reach and storms out of the room. The door slams shut behind her, rattling the picture frames she carefully selected to hang on the wall, punctuating her exit like a gunshot. I’m not sure where she’s headed. No one will let her out the front gates while we’re on lockdown, so Lily will have to stew in the bar with the others, blow off steam in the workshop with Fret, or picture my head on a target as she unleashes her turmoil in the Shamrocks gun range.

Whatever her choice, I need to know she’s okay.

I grab my cut off the back of the chair and fish my phone out of the inner pocket. Lily’s best friend, Nadia, has a shift at the hospital, so it’s up to the Shamrocks to help me manage her trauma tonight.

Opening up a group chat, I type out an SOS to all the brothers I trust to handle her with the appropriate combination of tough but honest love wrapped in the softly-softly of kid gloves.

VENOM: Cherub needs a shoulder that isn’t mine

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