Page 44 of Wicked Surrender

I had to hurt her. It wasn’t only about getting an eye for an eye, hurting Dean Chen’s daughter because he’d hurt my brother. This was about control. About her obeying the expectation I put on her to break and cry and show me that I couldn’t be dismissed and cast aside like this.

For fuck’s sake.

I wanted to see her squirm and cry and beg for mercy.

“Do you realize how worthless you are?” I taunted.

She huffed. “It seems I’m worthy of your pathetic attention.”

“You’re worthy of my anger and nothing more.”

She narrowed her eyes, sharpening her gaze to something a lot more like curiosity than I wanted to see. “Why?”

“Why do I make your life hell?”

Slowly shaking her head, she scowled at me like she was trying to figure me out. “Why me?”

“You make it so easy, Second-Best.”

“Second. First. Fiftieth.” She shrugged. “Pick a number. It doesn’t matter anymore.”

“Bullshit.” I slid closer quickly, hoping to startle her. Nose to nose, I was disappointed that she didn’t even flinch. “Don’t tell me that you save your tears for after you leave.”

She tipped closer, fiery irritation sparkling in her emerald eyes. “It’s pathetic that you think you matter enough to earn my tears.”

I gritted my teeth, breathing hard and damning the inch that remained between my lips and hers.

“Pathetic,” she repeated, seething as she stood without backing up.

I fisted my hands, gripping my chair with a white-knuckled hold.

Laura didn’t stand in front of me like a terrified target. She wasn’t giving me an innocent, wide-eyed look of alarm and nervousness.

Like this, fed up and unafraid to express it, she didn’t look like my target at all.

I had no clue how to follow up with her complete dressing down about wasting my time or that I could be pathetic in her eyes.

“You know what?” She grabbed her things, leaving my paper on the table. “Forget I asked. I don’t want to know why you want to bully me. I don’t care. Just like I don’t give a damn if you finally quit so you can go back to pretending you’re stupid and incapable and fucking your way through college when you’re sober enough to get it up at your parties.”

Backing up, she tipped her chin up and gave me a cool look of indifference that pissed me off.

“What you see is what you get,” she retorted, gesturing at herself. “So look good and hard, Jason. Because that’s the first and last time I’ll wastemyevening to point out how pathetic you are to show up here without any intention to give a damn about your future.”

With that, she turned and walked off.

She left me dumbfounded.

Mad.

Livid.

And surprisingly clueless over how to go back to what we had before. Where I held the power over her, secure in my role of tormenting her.

Right now, I felt powerless to do anything but regret that I had wasted my time with her.

Not by showing up to do nothing at these sessions.

I regretted wasting every second of that lost time when she could have been showing me how full of fight and passion she was all along.

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