Page 47 of Fear Me, Love Me

I shake my head, my fingers clenched on my knees. “I don’t care what I said when I was fifteen. I wasn’t talking to you. I was talking to an idea of you. You’ve hurt me as much as you possibly could. Take two or six or twelve hours off my deadline, unlock that door, and let me go and find Barlow.”

“Lucas. Who.”

Those two words hammer into my brain, and I can’t take it anymore. I shoot to my feet and scream. I shriek every curse word I can think of at the top of my lungs. My fingers are in my hair, pulling as hard as I can. Pain is the only thing that I crave.

“Vivienne. Don’t.” Tyrant seizes my wrists and forces me to stop. He traps my hands against his chest, and so I scratch his throat with my fingernails until I feel wetness beneath my fingers. If I can’t hurt myself then I’ll hurt him until he lets me go.

“You only want his name so you can tell me you don’t believe me as well,” I shriek at him as I struggle back and forth in his iron grip. “I’m not giving you that power. You’ve already stolen everything else from me. I won’t let you take one more thing.”

The diary has fallen at our feet, and seeing it laying open like that and displaying all my secrets feels obscene, and I moan at the sight. Tyrant kicks it away and it skitters into a dark corner where we can’t see it.

I’ve disgusted him.Him. Tyrant Mercer, who maims and kills people for a living.

“Look at me,” he commands.

“Don’t touch me. Ihateyou.”

He releases one of my wrists and shoves my chin up, forcing me to look at him. His harsh good looks are emphasized by the shadows, and his blue eyes blaze with cold fury. “Show me what you’re hiding.”

“I’m not giving you his name.”

He glances down at my ribs, and I realize with horror what he means. He doesn’t just want a name. He wants to see my scars.

“Never.” There’s no way in hell that’s happening. I’ve never shown them to anyone before. Not a friend. Not a boy. Not even a doctor. Tyrant might be able to strip my secrets from my diary, but he can’t have what’s on my body as well.

“You asked for my help,” Tyrant says. “You begged for me to know all about your pain four years ago. That’s not a lot of time. Things can’t have changed that much. So show me.”

“I was fifteen. A lot changes in four years.”

“Oh yes? Like your father suddenly believing you when you tell him that his friend is a predator?”

I want to spit in his face. I scream again and struggle in his grip. When I was fifteen, I was miserable enough to comfort myself with a fantasy about Tyrant, but this man isn’t anyone’s savior. He’s a violent criminal who stole my brother and terrified my family over a gambling debt. The scars aremyugliness, and I’m not sharing them with anyone. If I show him, then I’ll be handing him the power to make me feel even more worthless than I already do.

“Vivienne. Show me.”

“One flicker in your eyes will be enough for you to tell me I’m disgusting. I’m not giving you that kind of power.”

“Do you really think that after all I’ve seen and done, anything that you can show me will be too much for me?”

A lump rises in my throat. I never wrote that in my diary, but it’s what I always hoped, that a man as monstrous as him wouldn’t even flinch. Tyrant wouldn’t have to psych himself up to tell me that it didn’t matter to him that I had scars. He wouldn’t expect me to be slavishly grateful to him that he’s able to stomach the sight of me. He wouldn’t even see my scars. That was the fantasy.

“I need to get to Barlow,” I whimper.

“The clock has stopped in here.”

I squeeze my eyes shut. Now he stops the clock? Why did the first person who found out about my scars have to be him? The overwhelming love I had for Tyrant is etched into these scars. My fantasies about him are carved into my body.

“Please stop tormenting me. Just let me fail at your labyrinth and then kill my family. It will be easier for me to bear.”

“This isn’t about tormenting you.”

Tears collect on my lashes, and I brush them away. “Then I don’t understand why you want me to show them to you.”

“Because I really did think you were perfect.”

I look up at him. “What?”

“I hate perfect.” Tyrant cups my jaw in his large, warm hand. His velvety voice caresses me. “You wanted me to hurt you. Show me what you wished I could do better.”

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