Page 27 of Valentine's Miracle

“Just do it!” I snap, voice raised and deep as the echoes of my tone swallow the silence in this room. It leaves a nasty tension between us as she keeps her eyes locked on me, but my eyes can’t return to her when that damn bottle is still there.

“Okay, okay, I’ll throw it away.” Victoria picks up the bottle, and a hasty thump of my heart creates a shuddering breath in my lungs.

The loud clatter in the garbage erases some of the muscle tension in my back, but I know I won’t calm down and stop her from picking it back up when I’m not looking. I have to get rid of it soon, or I’ll go crazy.

“Silas,” Victoria murmurs, curling her hand into my arm and dragging me to my bed. “What’s wrong?”

I don’t fight her touch, and I don’t lean into it either. I just don’t feel right in my own skin, and it’s driving me up the walls. The absolute audacity of her to pull that bottle out again after what we had gone through. It was that bottle that triggered me because that was her reasoning.

Fighting with myself is a losing battle, and I didn’t have a chance of winning when she kneels between my legs and soothes the rage boiling in my blood. Her soft hands rub my forearms, bringing warmth to the coldness that I feel despite my scorching thoughts.

“Do you want me to leave?” she asks because she’s that kind of girl, always not knowing what is going on even if it’s right in front of her face.

I don’t want to fight anymore. I want the truth, the truth that I already knew seven years ago. I’m a masochist that likes to put myself in a pool of pain; I want to hear her reasons again.

I was immature and agitated, I just wanted to hear the reason, and nothing else mattered. Not the excuses before and not the explanation after the reason. For years, I have held onto that part because that was what mattered.

“No.” I wrap my hand around her wrist, holding and not letting up the pressure. She’s so small, and it makes me want to throw her on the bed and curl up against her.

She’ll be safe there. She’ll always be safe with me. I won’t ever let anything happen to her nor will I allow anything near her. Good or bad, everything stays away from her unless it’s coming from me.

This revelation is fucked up, and it’s not news to me. I have always had these possessive thoughts about Victoria, and it’s incurable, and I have tried to make it stop. It seems to only get worse over time and eventually, it becomes an obsessive train wreck about wanting to know everything about her.

When Sebastian would talk, it’s not hard to make him steer into the topic of Victoria. I don’t care who he met that day or what girl he took to his bed; I just want to hear about Victoria. I breathe easy when I know she’s safe and out of harm’s way, but I would get this unusual and eerier satisfaction knowing no man had put their hands on her.

Mine, the voice in my head sneers. Yes, she’s mine. I was too stupid and too stubborn to accept it, but I’m ready to. A part of me doesn’t care what had happened in the past; I’m not above using manipulation and violence to get her to stay.

The lights flicker violently, and her attention is stolen from me. She looks up and winces when the lights keep wavering on and off. It eventually turns off, and she frowns in confusion. I have to remind her that my grip on her arm is secure so she doesn’t get away.

Victoria pats my hand with her free one before reaching for the phone attached to the nightstand in the middle of the room that separates two beds. She dials the reception desk, but they don’t pick up, and she hangs up.

“Huh,” she ponders. “It didn’t go through. Weird, I wonder what happened.”

I tug her hand, letting her sit on the bed while I want to take this chance to let everything take its course. I want every piece of information, and I want to know why she denied what happened seven years ago.

Maybe I had missed something when I was too angry to listen to her, and if not, then I want to dig into her head to see what is going to make her stay with me this time.

There’s a beep on her phone and it shows a message on the screen. She reads it while letting me hold her wrist. She can’t outrun me, and I’m not going to let her either. This consuming need to dominate, to control her is insane, and somehow it had only resurfaced when Fyodor showed up in the picture.

He’s so close to her, and it makes me envious, a bit too obsessively jealous of knowing how far their relationship had gone. I never got a chance to ask her before as I was battling with my feelings, but also because I was scared of her answer.

“Fyodor,” I begin, and it’s hard to phrase the question.

She hums to let me know she’s listening as her eyes read the email.

“What is he to you?”

Biting the inside of my cheek, I wait for her to look at me. She’s going to see this insecure man, and I have reasons to be. Fyodor is more successful, older, and more experienced in life than I am. He has been in her life for the seven years that I actively avoided her, and I regret that a lot.

He has seen her change and made memories with her that most likely took over the memories of me in her heart.

I don’t want that. I don’t want to be the washed-out fragment that occasionally comes up in her thoughts and fade away just as quick.

“A wild animal.”

“What?” A growl rumbles in my chest, but she pays no heed to the noise as she scrolls through the email.

“He’s a party animal,” she mumbles as the sky grows dark with a blustery storm. “Fyodor looks like a church-going boy with a middle-part, but he likes to go on adventures with women—if you know what I mean.”

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