Page 58 of Cashmere Ruin

“I don’t want to hear it,” I snap. “I don’t want to hear a single word from you. I don’t care what you have to say unless it’s about the baby you fucking stole from me. Are we understood?”

It’s like a metamorphosis takes place: April shifts from meek and timid to the picture of fury. A hare turned mama bear. “‘Are we understood’?” she echoes with disdain as she stands. “Are you kidding me? The baby Istolefrom you? How about you get off that high horse of yours, then come back down to earth and talk to me like a human being?”

“Like that’s not exactly what happened,” I grit, knocking my chair to the floor as I rise to meet her.

“No,” she roars back, “it’s not! I’ll tell you what happened: youmarried someone else.You let me think you’d knocked up another woman, then started treating me like garbage.That’swhat happened.”

With every word she spits, every venomous dart aimed at my throat, she steps closer. She strides around the table and glares at me, fury made flesh, the fire in her eyes blazing brighter than a star. A supernova ready to burn planets to the ground.

I step forward, too, the same rage coursing through my veins. “And you think that justifies what you did?” I snarl, forcing her back against the floor-to-ceiling window. “Takingmy daughter?—”

“I took her from a monster!” she screams, loud enough for the entire penthouse to hear. “I took her from a man who didn’t care about her anymore, who had abetter childcoming!”

“There was never another child!” I roar.

“And I didn’t KNOW THAT!”

She’s so close I can feel her breath on mine, ragged and panting. Her screams split my ears in half, but I don’t have the patience to de-escalate; instead, I just raise my voice louder. “SO WHAT?!”

“So I did what was best for her! I did what was best for both of us!”

“And that was getting away from me?!”

“YES!”

We’re both panting now, yelling into each other’s space. Our hands are balled into fists at our sides, April’s knuckles so white they almost disappear. From the window, the night lights frame her like a vision: a vengeful goddess come to drag me down to hell.

“You told me you wanted no one else. You told me you wanted me. You said…” She keeps listing off my sins, one after the other, voice shattering at the edges like glass, stained and broken and?—

Beautiful.Beautiful above all else.

“What else?” I rasp.

“You told me you wanted to live with me,” she croaks.

“What else?”

“That you were going to get your things and move in with me.”

“Whatelse?”

“You told me that youloved?—”

I kiss her.

It’s the last fucking straw: I take April’s face in my hands and claim her lips with mine, swallowing the rest of her words. Swallowingeverything.

If I could, I would eat her whole.

I can feel April struggle against me, her hands curling in the fabric of my shirt before finally giving in. But when she kisses back, it isn’t a surrender—it’s a declaration of war.

“I hate you,” she gasps into my mouth.

I rip her blouse at the seams. “Say it again.”

“I hate you.”

“Again.”

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