Page 51 of Not Your Hero

“Why the drugs? Huh? What the hell are you afraid of, Gannix?” she taunts me. I don’t know what was said to her at the event, but it had to have been something bad to affect her this way.

“What did she tell you?” Now she smirks at me and it does little more than make me want her even more.

“You’d like to know, wouldn’t you, coward.” That’s a new one. She hasn’t called me that before.

“Coward? And what is it that I’m being a coward about?”

“What are you hiding, Gannix? Huh? What the hell are you hiding from me?” She yells this time.

“Hiding from you?”

“Yeah. You force me to expose my scars, but I hear you have some of your own,” she hisses. That’s what she told her? How the fuck did Amber know that? How would she have known? She doesn’t know me like that. I step into Emerson’s space, grabbing her face roughly in my hand.

“Is that what she told you?”

“That’s it, isn’t it? You’re hiding behind your fucking drugs,” she taunts as I squeeze her face harder. I know it hurts; that’s the point.

“You don’t know shit.”

“Show me.” She challenges me, and I love that, except this isn’t something I want to be challenged on. I shove her face away from me and step back as she laughs manically.

“You are a fucking coward! You stalk me, kill my friend, let your brother steal me. What kind of man are you?” She’s trying to get under my skin, and I know it. I know what she’s doing, but I can’t let her.

“What kind of man am I? I’m the one who got you out of there, Emerson! I kept him from killing you.”

“I don’t know why. Or is this why? So you could keep me and drug me just to fuck me? What are you so afraid of?”

“I’m not afraid,” I tell her.

“Lies. It’s all lies, Gannix. I can see it in your eyes. You’re scared.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Yeah, you are. Scared little fucking boy! Is that what daddy did to you? He made you into a scared little boy afraid of a woman seeing you?” she taunts, and it burns. She should know not to do this to me. She should be careful and tread carefully with her words, but she doesn’t, and maybe that’s what else I like about her. She isn’t one to hold back. She isn’t one to give in.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about!” I roar this time. She laughs.

“Are you getting mad? Little Gannix can’t face the fact daddy did this to him?”

“Shut up, Emerson!”

“Where was mommy? Didn’t she come and save you from the mean man?” She continues, unable to stop now she’s started it seems.

“You don’t know shit,” I hiss at her.

“I know you’re scared! I know you’re a frightened little boy in a man’s body! So fucking afraid to let someone see who you really are.”

“Is that what you think?”

“Yeah, it is. Tell me I’m wrong! Go ahead, tell me!”

“They saw me, Emerson! Those women? They fucking saw me, and they had to die!”

“Why? What the hell did they see, Gannix? That you’re not perfect? That we’re all a little fucked up?” She yells louder this time.

“I’m beyond fucked up, Emerson. Once you see, there will be no other choice but to kill you,” I tell her. Now she laughs again. This time louder.

“Chicken shit.”

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