Page 168 of Volatile Obsessions

Lux threw her head back and laughed, but it wasn’t amused. “Unbelievable. Un-be-fucking-lievable! You find out I willing slept with him, and that I kept it from you, and you’re standing there acting like you get it. Using this as a ploy to subdue me and sway me right back into your arms. You’re fucking disgusting! she bellowed, shoving me away again.

But I caught her wrists a second time, unwilling to let her go. How could she think that?

“Lux, stop.”

“Let me go,” she gritted out. “You’re disgusting and fucking daft if you think forgiving my indiscretions changes anything for you. I didn’t hide my relationship with Vic for the same reason you did! You were playing me for a fucking fool!”

“Listen to me, please—it’s not a ploy,” I said evenly, tightening my hold on her wrists as I walked us backward.

“Fuck you! Let me go!”

“No, stop. Just listen to me.”

“Let me fucking go, Roman,” she snarled, gasping when her waist hit the roof’s ledge, cars honking and zooming hundreds of feet below us.

“No—knock it off already and listen to me!” I barked.

“Let go!” Elbow to my side.

“NO,” I growled, holding tighter still.

“LET GO!” Knee to my thigh.

“NO!”

“LET FUCKING GO!”

“NO, FUCKING NO! STOP! STOOOP!” I roared at the top of my lungs, the enraged sound carrying through the busy city around us.

My voice fucking echoed. In the city.

That’s how loud I was. How I suddenly angry I was.

And she flinched because of it.

Lux Mercier actually flinched.

Then she froze, her chest heaving, pale blues barely holding back fresh tears. Her stare didn’t falter, though, and what I saw run through there—what I finally saw such clarity—hit me like a bucket of ice water.

Resentment.

Anguish.

Suffering.

Betrayal.

Every emotion was my doing, my fault. I’d truly, truly hurt her, and while that had been the plan at one point in time, the plan became null and void the second I fell for her.

But I’d done it anyway.

I’d managed to fuck everything up.

Managed to fuck us up.

It physically wounded me. Crippled me all over again, worse now than before.

The heart I spent years without, the one she stitched back together, felt like it was breaking.

---