Page 67 of Pride
“Yeah, well the truth can be painful.” She paced before him, flexing her fists.
“You’re not the only one in pain.”
She stopped. Blanked. Then started pacing again, grappling with her thoughts. “You’re right,” she said.
“I am?”
“Yes. How is my pain any more important than yours?” She faced him and lifted her chin. “One of us has to go first. One of us has to rip off the Band-Aid and be the bigger person, it may as well be me.”
“Oh no. You don’t get to go first. I’ll go first.”
“My scars are from penance!” she shouted at the same time he roared, “Every time I look at you, I feel proud.”
“What?” they both said.
“You’re proud of me?” she rushed. “And that’s why you were out of balance so fast?”
“Yes,” he ground out, then went back to her answer with a sinking feeling in his gut. “What do you mean, those scars are your penance?”
Her lashes lowered. “Any time a Sinner comes back from a mission, we must see a priest and complete our penance. Sometimes that involves physical acts of contrition. The lash, the cilices, the sack, the—”
“Those are antiquated forms of penance. I thought the church was done with those,” he growled.
She shrugged. “The Sisterhoodwasdone with them. They gave up trying to save our souls from the fiery pits of Hell. But now the Vatican is in our hair, they believe we have to keep trying.” She turned her back and lifted her shirt, displaying the hatching of silvery scars, new and old. “This is them trying.” She dropped her shirt and rounded on him. “But I can’t completely blame them. I accept responsibility. I want to be saved. And if this is the way to do it, then I’ll never stop trying. Your turn. Why did you break the piano?”
“Because I hate—” He bit his words off.
“You hate what? That you need me?”
They were shouting now, and The Beast wanted a say. Parker’s next words came out guttural and straight from the lion’s mouth. “I hate that I need you so much it hurts. That I want to fuck you senseless every time I smell you. That there’s this animal part of me that cares nothing for decorum or decency. It wants to bite anyone else who comes near you. It wants to devour you and feast on you until there’s nothing left.” His eyes fluttered at the memory of her intimate taste, craving it with a passion that made him painfully aroused.
“What does that have to do with the piano?”
“Nothing,” he snapped. “Everything!”
“So tell me. Trust me!”
“You want to know more? Fine. I hate that I feel pride so much when I see you, I’m thrown into chaos. I hate that I didn’t see you sooner.”
“You saw me, Parker. I was always there!”
She turned her back on him and went to the kitchen. No. They weren’t done. His strides ate up the space between them, and he gripped her shoulders, shaking her. “Youweren’t there, Alice.Youstill aren’t fully here.”
She folded her arms. “You’re doing it again. Deflecting. Answer. My. Damned. Question.”
Now his chest was heaving, his breathing labored. The Beast wanted to go to bat for him, but it was Alice.It was his mate.He had to trust her. Or what was this all for? What was the point?
“I’m not perfect,” he confessed. “My hand isn’t.” He threw up the bionic hand in her face. “Sometimes there’s a delay and I need it to be perfect.”
Her brows lifted in the middle. “And what do you think will happen if you’re not perfect for once? The world will continue to turn, the—”
“I might let go of you!”
He realized this was a stupid emotion for him to have, to fear perfection when she was a Sinner—someone so used to being told she was evil that she’d just accepted it. She allowed herself to be flogged, because she probably thought she deserved it. Just like him, she was the product of another’s ill-conceived machinations.
How could he rationalize that sharp tug in his chest every time he thought about making a mistake? Every time he remembered Mary slamming that close button on the elevator and leaving Daisy behind in the burning building. Every time he thought about Alice’s true reason for being with him—to finish what the original Sisterhood started.
She might be his mate, but what was he to her? A failsafe?
