Page 43 of Velvet Thorns
Heartbreak.
Pain.
Humiliation gnawing at my insides until I don’t know where the shame ends and the fury begins.
I could keep going. I could list every festering thing clawing at the walls of my chest, but they all circle back to one person.
Not Shannen.
No.
She walked away, and I’m letting her have that illusionof freedom for now. But Brandon? The motherfucker who helped drive her away all those years ago. He’s done. He’s mine.
I’m still standing in the room where Shannen gutted me clean open, hands shaking so hard I nearly drop my phone. I open the app and check her location. I’ve been tracking her for years and stopped pretending it was normal a long time ago. It’s not about control or power. It’s about needing to know where the hell she is when she’s not with me because if I don’t, I unravel.
I stare at the screen, my breath coming too fast, watching that little blue dot like it’s my lifeline. I already know her next move—she’s predictable in her panic. She’ll try to get a car and run before I can close the distance between us again.
She’s headed back to the other hotel—the one I made sure to book a room in too.
She still has no clue it was me who picked her up from the airport. She sat behind me in the back seat and looked right through me in that rearview mirror—past the baseball cap, shades, and the fake accent I’d practiced for months.
She didn’t sense me at all, and I hated it.
But right now, I need to find that piece of shit.
In some twisted, romanticized corner of my brain, I’d convinced myself to wait. To leave him be but always know exactly where he is. For years, I let the idea simmer—thinking maybe Shannen would want to handle him herself. That one day, when she was ready, I’d gift wrap him in blood and bruises and place him at her feet.
A brutal gift of devotion.
Closure, maybe.
Justice for all the time we lost.
But with the way she looked at me tonight—with all that broken hate behind her eyes—I know she wouldn’t accept anything from me right now. Not even him.
I step back into the ballroom, the pulse of music louder, the crowd drunker and looser than before. Laughter echoes off the high chandeliered ceilings, and when I spot Brandon standing by the bar, drink in hand, talking to Fiona Finch like he’s king of the fucking world, something in me snaps.
I barely knew Fiona in high school. She was just another desperate girl with too much eyeliner and not enough self-worth, always orbiting the popular crowd, flashing her tits for attention, and hoping to get pulled into the light.
“Phoenix, my man! Thought you were hooking up with that redhead chick?” Brandon calls out the second I’m close, grinning like we’re old friends. He claps me on the back, and I flinch. My skin’s still raw and tender to the touch, but I steel myself.
“Yeah, I did. She’s gone now.”
“Shame, I would’ve loved a turn.”
Don’t kill him.
Breathe, Phoenix.
Don’t rip his fucking throat out. Not yet.
“Hello,” Fiona snaps from beside him, clearly pissed. “You’ve been trying to get into my pants for the past twenty minutes.”
Brandon shrugs, completely unbothered. “Yeah, and you were a hell of a lot easier in high school.”
“You’re a prick.” She spits it out with more fire than I remember. Maybe she’s grown a spine since those days. Good for her.
“And you’re still average.” He flashes that lazy smile, the one that used to make girls melt and now just makes me want to put my fist through his teeth.
