Page 91 of Did They Break You

“I need you to let me go.” Her voice is little more than a whisper. “I need you to letthisgo. I need you toreleaseme.”

I slide my hands lower down her back, my fingers brushing the waistband of her jeans. “Let you go?”

“Yes,” she pleads with me.“Yes.”

“I don’t think I can. You ruined that possibility.Of me ever letting you go.” I speak those words against her ear, and feel a shiver run through her body with my breath on her skin.

“You can’t get it out of your mind either? You replay it over and over and over and wonder where the fuck you went wrong? When it all went to fucking shit?”

I hear her swallow in the darkness and quiet of the cemetery. “Yes,” she whispers. “It’s on a loop in my head.”

I nudge her head to the side with my nose and she lets me, my lips opening over her skin. “So are those cuffs around my wrist. The cops in mygoddamn house.”

She stiffens but doesn’t move away.

“You deserved that,” she breathes, and she presses her body close to mine. “You deserved worse.”

I laugh against her skin. “You deserve what you claimed I did to you.”

“You don’t mean that,” she whispers.

No. I don’t mean it.And if anyone ever did that to her, I’d kill them.

But I don’t say anything.Can’tsay anything.

“I hate you so much,” she says in my silence, choking on the words.

She doesn’t. She can’t. Because I can’t hate her either.“Come home with me.”

Her answer is immediate. “No.”

“Are you with anyone, Remi?” I ask her, changing the subject, making her mad instead of sad. I know from experience anger is easier to deal with. I nudge my nose over her neck. “Is someone missing you right now? Is someone going to be pissed I touched their property?”

“I’m no one’sproperty.”But despite the real anger in her words, she doesn’t back away.

I groan, sucking her skin between my teeth and listening to her whimper.

“You’re right,” I whisper, “because if you were anyone’s but mine, I’d kill him, baby. Because you’ve been in my head for a year. You never left.”

She’s so still.

But only for a moment.

Then she’s squirming in my arms, pushing hard against my chest. “Cortland,” she gasps against my shirt, “let me go?—”

“Shh, shh, shh, baby.”

She’s still fighting, thrashing in my arms.

“Who is he? Someone in your phone called you babe.” She starts going wild, indignation in her gasp. But I hold her tighter and her cries are muffled as much as I’m smothering her, my chin on her head as I stare out at the tombstones, imagining burying anyone who’s ever touched her like I have. “Who do I need to kill, pretty baby?”

She keeps fighting, her nails digging hard into my skin now, and it’s painful, but I just close my eyes and squeeze her tighter.

After a minute, she stops fighting me, breathing hard in my arms, her chest rising and falling rapidly. “Please,” she whispers in the dark, “please let me go.”

“Tell me it’s only been me.” I want to hear her say the words.

“You’re sick.” Her voice is so quiet, and she’s so still. “You’re so sick.”

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