Page 52 of Fearless

I dunno.

How does any delusion begin?

There’s a moment when things shift. When there’s a change. I guess it’s all a matter of perspective, huh?

Because, for me, that change was good.

But, I guess, for him…maybe there was no change. No fucking moment.

Cillian was just playing a game all along.

With me.

With my feelings.

With my motherfuckingheart.

Stringing me along like a fish that just refuses to stop fighting. Reeling me in with his eyes and his kindness and his magnetic self—

Fuck it. I punch him in the fucking throat.

And then I yell something wordless and primal as I truly—truly—scamper the fuck out of my fort.

He reaches me by the time I’m halfway up the stairs. I guess I finally did some damage because he makes a rattling sound as he grabs me around the waist and hoists me into the air.

“Fuck you!” I shriek.

I don’t hold back. This time, when I struggle, the fury of my entire nineteen years of pain and humiliation and suffering is behind every blow.

So when I get a strike into something soft—belly, groin, does it matter?—the ferocious growl he lets out sends a signal to the little fluffy thing inside me.

FIGHT!

He reels back, his balance momentarily gone, and I take full advantage. Instead of going for the door, I go for him.

It’s pathetic, how easily he grabs my wrists and stops my clawed hands inches from his face. Even winded, off-balance, he’s a better fighter than I’ll ever be.

Because I’ve spent my entire life agreeing, agreeing, agreeing!

There’s a moment, like that instant when the scales are perfectly balanced, where we just stare at each other like the mortal enemies we both know we are.

No more games.

No more pretending.

“You can’t change this,” he murmurs as he scans my face. “So why do you keep fighting?”

And just like that, the scale keeps tipping. The universe exhales. I try and ram my shoulder into him, doing anything I can to bring him pain.

And Cillian?

What does he do?

He picks me up like a toy his kid left on the carpet. And he takes me over to the bare-stripped bed. And he tosses me down so hard that, when I bounce, I cut the inside of my lip with my teeth.

He reaches for me. To restrain me, to slap me, to fuck me—I don’t know.

But I lash out at him with a foot.

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