Page 96 of Never Fall for an Angel

“Why? Men do it all the time.”

“Drinking won’t solve your problems.”

“In case you hadn’t noticed, I can do bad, all on my own. I don’t need you to feel sorry for me.”

“Good. I don’t.”

“That’s nice, Christian. You know, maybe you should go into counseling. You have a stellar approach,” I mutter dryly, tears welling in my eyes as I stomp towards the bathroom.

“Where are you going?”

“I don’t want to do this right now.”

“Mila, get the fuck back here.”

“Or what?” I challenge, spinning back to him so fast, my hair whips me in the face.

“This is what you want to do? Relive the same fucking night over and over, or do you want to move past it?”

“Stop!”

“No,” he argues back, his voice raising over mine. “You want to wallow in your self-pity, or are you going to do something about it?”

“I don’t want to do any of it anymore!”

My chest heaves with the force behind my words. My ears ring in the silence, my throat sore and tight.

“I am sosickand fucking tired of everyone thinking I’mwallowingin self-pity.” I scrub a hand over my face, refusing to look at him. If I look at him, I know I’ll break.

A chuckle tears from my throat, but it lacks any real emotion.

“Do you know what it’s like to wake up alone in a hospital bed covered in your own blood?” He’s silent, and I can feel his eyes burning my skin. “To not know if you’re having your period orinstead. . . thinking you’d never really made it out andeverything you’d gone through the past few weeks was all just some bullshit dream meant to fuck you up before you die? Have you ever known what it’s like to lose something so precious and have to live with the guilt?”

I meet his gaze, and there’s not an ounce of emotion in it. Nothing but silence. I can tell by the look in his eyes he didn’t know.

Fuck, no one knew.

“To hear your own mothercryingwhen she thinks you’re asleep to her boyfriend because you can’t even stand to be in the same room as her, let alone give her a hug. To have to look at your body in the mirror andhateyourself because all you can see is the reminder of what happened carved into your skin and know it’syour fault?”

The silence is so loud it buzzes in the air around us.

“Because I do,” I breathe. A tear slips down my cheek, and I swipe it away. I won’t cry. I’ve spent weeks of my life crying.

“Not that it makes a difference to you,” I utter under my breath. Why am I telling him any of this? He’s already said he doesn’t care. The Christian in my dreams and the Christian right in front of me are two very different people. “I was just the easy one, right?”

Christian doesn’t say anything, his gaze trained on the wall behind my head. I keep waiting for whatever words of wisdom he thinks he has because that’s what everyone does. They say some bullshit line about how it’ll get better. How it’ll hurt a little less as time wears on, but none of them really know. They’re just trying to make themselves feel better by offering me a stick disguised as an olive branch.

“Get dressed,” he says after a long moment, and I just blink at him. I guess I was so lost in my own thoughts I’d almost forgotten he was there. He turns to me, and his gaze holds alook I can’t place. Something dark and teeming with anger but broken and savage at the same time. Before I can place it, it’s gone.

“What?”

“Get dressed. We’re going somewhere.”

“Where?” I ask, a sense of longing filling my chest at getting off the island.

“You’ll see.”

“What is this place?”

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