Page 148 of Theirs to Corrupt

I took some measure of comfort from the fact Tessa had the foresight to push a button to summon Pax. She trusts him, if not me. “We could have lost her.”

“Keep this up, and we still will.”

Rage makes me grind my back teeth together.

“You need to let her in.”

To my cold, dark heart? We both know I don’t have one. My father saw to that. What little bit that was left shattered the day I placed a single red rose on top of my mother’s casket.

My father led me away, and I stopped to look back the moment they began to lower her into the ground.

My tears finally fell, and my father brutally pinched my ear.“Don’t fucking cry, boy. You’re not a goddamn infant. You’re a Merritt.”

“Showing emotion doesn’t make you weak.”

Pax knows me better than anyone else on this planet…realizes what he’s asking. More than anyone, he fucking knows I can’t give her anything more than I already have.

“You’re about to lose the best thing that ever happened to you.” He smacks his palm against my desk. Then he uses the momentum to stand. “To us. And I fucking resent you for that.”

He strides to the exit, then stops and faces me.

His eyes are dead cold.

When he speaks, his voice is flat, condemning. “I ought to lay you out flat myself. Something has to get through your fucking thick skull.”

Once more, he slams the door, making it rattle, the sound hammering through my head, echoing with finality.

He’s gone, and so is Tessa, at least emotionally.

But I’ve given her everything I possibly can.

I know it’s not enough.I’mnot enough.

Never will be.

I pick up the whiskey glass that I’ve been nursing all day. I hurl it at the wall.

Shards splinter everywhere, just like the pieces of my life.

Now what the hell am I supposed to do?

Tessa

“What do you think of this one?”

Frustrated by all the options, I blow out a breath and look at Natalie.

Several days have passed since the awful incident at her house. Since she’s such an amazing friend, she is spending her day apartment hunting with me.

So far, we’ve visited five different places. Although they are all nice, serviceable, none of them feel right.

“Tessa?”

“It’s…” We’re standing in the small living room of a unit close to downtown, and they’re starting to blur together. “Fine, I guess.”

Each place that we visited, she picked up papers with floor plans and lists of amenities and tucked them all into a portfolio.

She’s way more organized about this whole thing than I am.

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