Page 120 of Runaways

"No!" he yells, lunging for me before I can bring the lamp down on the hardwood floor. He snatches it out of my hands, tossing it aside, and it rolls across the floor behind him. "No more fucking lamp shivs!"

I scream, struggling against him as he pins me to the floor with a hand on each of my wrists.

"Get off me!"

"No! You need to stop, Noah. I'm bigger than you, I'm stronger than you, and you need to fucking stop!"

I fight for a couple more minutes—until my muscles won't cooperate and my body refuses to move—and then I finally give up. I turn my head to the side, bite my lip and blink back tears I refuse to let him see.

"I'm sorry," Tate says softly. "It was a good try."

I sniffle. "Thanks."

"You got me good with that chair, John Cena," he says. "That fucking hurt. In your next fake life, maybe you can join the WWE."

"It's not funny," I tell him. "You left me there—in that hole, in the rain—to die. You always…"

"What? What do I always do?"

I notice he's loosened his grip on my wrists and try again to get free.

"Nope," he says, shoving me back onto the ground.

"Just let me go or kill me, Tate."

"What do I always do, Noah?" he asks again.

I shake my head and look up at the ceiling.

Hurt me.All Tate ever does is hurt me.

"Why'd you leave me?" Tate moves his knees from my thighs and lies down on top of me, forcing me to meet his eyes. "Why did you run away from me?"

"You were going to kill me! You said you were going to murder me in my sleep."

"What about the first time?"

"You were going to kill me then, too; you were just doing it differently. The result would've been the same, though." I look away, fixing my gaze on the television over his shoulder.

"I wish you would have trusted me the way you trust him. Now, I can never trust you."

"I don't trust Silas, either," I say defiantly.

"You'relying. I can tell when you're lying."

"Yeah, well, I can tell when you're lying, too. That's why I don't trust you. You're always fucking lying!"

"I was good to you." He leans in, running a hand through my hair, his lips close enough to mine that I can feel his words against them. Blood drips from his wounds, mixing with the dried mud on my chest as gravity pulls them in different directions down my body. "You were happy; I saw it. That wasn't a lie."

"You made me feel worthless. And then you expectedmeto apologize for it."

"I made a fucking mistake, Noah.Jesus.You can't just abandon people who care about youafter ten yearsbecause they make one fucking mistake."

"That's what Mia did to me."

"We weren't a mistake," he says. "We certainly weren'tonemistake." He nuzzles his cheek against mine and presses a kiss to my jaw before trailing his lips onto my neck.

"Tate…" I pause, shrugging him off. "Don't."

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