Page 44 of The Pretty Psycho

I just… I just had no idea what to think, how to feel, what to do with this pain in my chest and the pain in my body, and the last thing I needed was for him to look at me as if I was fragile.

"Let. Me. Go," I bit out, taking a step back from him. His eyes narrowed, nostrils flared, and before I could take another step, he lifted me up in his arms as if I weighed nothing, making me wrap my legs around his waist and my arms around his neck.

"Vega," he growled, his words laced with barely contained anger. "Let me make one thing fucking clear to you. You can be angry, you can be sad, pissed, emotional, hungry, sleepy, whatever…" he trailed off, breathing heavily. "But you will never, ever run from me. I won't allow it, not anymore."

"You're not the boss of me," I snapped, starting to sound like a petulant child, but I really needed him to let me go. Just to let me breathe for a bit, to let me feel like my old self. I wasn't used to this kind of attention. I wasn't used to a man holding me like Iwas something precious, and I definitely wasn't used to the looks of pity.

"No," he grumbled. "I'm not the boss of you. I'm probably nothing to you." Ouch. I tried ignoring the hurt seeping in those words. "But you're everything to me. You're the sun, the sky, the fucking moon, and I'll be damned if I let you run from me. The last time you ran I almost lost you, and I'm not going through that hell ever again."

I heard him, I got it. I understood, sort of. But he had to let me breathe.

"You're suffocating me," I whispered, unable to meet his eyes. "And you're looking at me with pity. I don't want your pity. I don't want anyone's pity."

"Adrian," Dimitri murmured. "We need to?—"

"Not fucking now, Dimitri!" Adrian bellowed, his eyes holding the hurt I knew my words had put there. "You think I'm suffocating you?" Fuck, I didn't want to get into this right now, if ever. Hell, I didn't even know what came over me, but seeing all these people, knowing I wasn't strong enough to fight right now, it all came barreling into me, and the pity in his eyes was just the cherry on top of a very fucked-up cake. "Do you?" he mumbled, his voice trembling as he held me in his arms.

I wished I could say I hated his hands on me. I wished I could say I hated the way he cared for me, but I couldn't. I couldn't lie to myself, and I didn't want to.

But I hated him seeing me as less than I was before. I didn't want him to see me as a fragile little girl who couldn't defend herself from her attacker.

I was trained for that kind of situation, and yet when the Tyler situation went down, when he cracked my soul, I couldn't do anything. I was too weak to fight him. I was too weak to do anything. I didn't know how to get out of my head and how to use the training I had.

I didn't want to admit that even though he had me chained to that wall, I could've fought. I fucking could have, and I didn't. I just took it, feeling like the weakest fucking person. Maybe it was the shock controlling me, or maybe it was something else. I don’t know.

I simply did not know anything anymore.

"I need you to let me go, Adrian," I repeated, lowering my head because looking into his eyes was bound to break me, and I didn't want that to happen. Not right now when we had a crowd gathered not too far from us. "Please."

"Answer my question, Bambi," he rasped. "Do you really think that? That I'm suffocating you?"

I had no answer to his question, because on one side he wasn't suffocating me. Not even a little bit. I loved his attention. I loved the fact that he didn't let me get away yesterday after I came back from the hospital. I loved the fact that he cleaned my wounds, that he took care of me and made sure I ate something before falling asleep.

But on the other side, he was suffocating me. He was everywhere all at once. He was in my bloodstream, and the more time I spent in his company, the more I was losing my independence, or at least it felt that way. I didn't know how to function this way. I didn't know how to let other people in.

The last time I did that was with Tyler, and look how that turned out.

"I don't trust you," I murmured, hating myself just a little bit more when I looked up, seeing the pure shattering of his soul right in his eyes.But I want to, I wanted to continue. Unfortunately, it was already too late to add that, to elaborate on that sentence, and maybe I didn't want to.

Maybe I still hated him for withholding the truth from me. Maybe I was just a mess right now, unable to differentiate all these different feelings coursing through my veins.

Adrian lowered me to the ground, his eyes unfocused, looking anywhere but at me while his throat worked, obviously fighting for proper words.

"You don't?—"

"Vega!" Yolanda's voice cut through whatever Adrian was about to say, and I was never more thankful to see her than right now. And to think that I wanted to silence her the first time I met her.

"Not now, Yolanda," Adrian grumbled, holding on to me as if I didn't just tear his heart out and throw it on the floor. "Bambi, we really need to talk. Please," he said, pleading with his eyes, but I wasn't ready for that. I wasn't sure if I liked this version of myself, and I wasn't sure if I would ever be ready to meet the version I could be if I let him in.

"Not now, Adrian," I mumbled, stepping away from him. His hand fell away from my shoulder where he held it, defeat washing over his features, and I just wanted to scream at him to fight. To fight for me. To show me, goddammit, that he wanted me, even with all my fucked-up pieces.

I felt Yolanda next to me before I even saw her, and I didn't miss the glare Adrian directed at her, or the little whimper escaping her lips when she caught sight of it.

"I'm going to stay with Yolanda," I said, determined to put some distance between us. This was all too much. He was too much and I didn't know what to do with it all. I had no idea how to deal with the force that was Adrian Zylla.

I wasn't sure that I wanted to, not right now.

"Don't run from me, Vega. Please, don't fucking run. Don't do this to me."

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