Page 158 of Falling in Reverse

bay

I wasn’t it.

I never was. The man in front of me is a nightmare walking. Someone that made me skittish for years and barely able to function.

Everything inside me freezes to a halt—just like before.

I can’t move.

The inside of my mouth is suddenly dry. And nothing in this world can make me feel better, in this moment, unless it’s Levi at my side.

Not the man who currently hates me with every fiber of his being.

“Bay, sweetheart. Why you gotta run my men like that?” His smooth voice slices up my spine like a whip.

The low, taunting nature of what is Matteo De Leon.

And it immediately sets into every nerve ending in my body, setting it aflame with shame, trepidation, and a little bit of irritation.

However, I don’t bother rounding Cairo’s body, because I think I’m going to get sick. He’s already set me down so that he could get a better handle on the more pressing issue at hand.

Nonetheless, I can’t help but appreciate that he’s hidden my body with his as a shield so I can try to mentally prepare myself for what’s to come.

Before I have to meet the man who broke me in half for almost three years, wondering what I did wrong for him to loathe me. The blight existence I lived in, that he created for me, emerging from the depths of my head is overwhelming and I begin to shake at the thoughts of it.

Swallowing down the forming lump in my throat, I hate that it even molded there in the first place. It’s been an additional four years since Matteo and I dated, yet it’s hard to forget your past when it’s written all over your body and brain. I have a few scars leftover from that asshole when he got too fucked up to realize that I wasn’t a man who couldn’t take a beating as well as them.

Cairo takes a step back, bumping into my body and subtly warning me that someone is approaching us.

Inhaling a deep breath, I move before I can think better of it, coming to Cairo’s side but far enough away to show that I’m not with him.

Matteo notices that shit.

He’s perceptive of everything.

“I miss you, Bay,” he mutters, deep and tight, right in front of his men as a silent warning that I’m off-limits at all times. “I didn’t expect you to be here.”

He’s so full of shit, it’s stupid.

Matteo De Leon was the first boy I ever fell in love with, if that’s what it was. I used him to get away from my mother, or Paisley, as much as he used me to get off. He treated me well for the first half of our relationship until he started to gain more position in his little gang and learned how to disrespect. His head grew too big, and my brain got way too small with the deep desire that I wanted us to be together forever.

Forever.

The thought of that with him makes me want to die.

Especially when I’m presented with the same murky brown eyes that took me a full year to get out of my head. His bronze skin clenches as he glares at me, a deep red scar running down the side of his right cheek, because I’m by a man—actually, man-handled by a man—who’s power he wants to wield.

“I’m always at a race,” I drive from my mouth, my tongue heavy and a sheet of sweat forming at the back of my neck. And if he was so street-smart, he’d know that. I’m not totally naive to believe that he’s never looked me up or asked about me.

“With company, I see.” His dark eyes steer to Cairo. “Is this how our fight’s gonna be? You runnin’ off?”

“You tryin’ to take me out before the Titan fight is lookin’ a little desperate,” Cairo says tightly. “Did you need your boys to help you accomplish that? There’s still time to call it off, De Leon. Better now than you being revealed as a weak piece of shit than you already do.”

Matteo smirks, causing my fingers to ball into fists.

It’s the first sign of him losing his patience and painting the picture that he’s fine.

He doesn’t think, he just does.

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