Page 42 of You Were Always Mine
I can still see her face — wet and broken, burned behind my eyes. The way her body shook, the way she shoved past everyone like she was running from fire.
Jax is still talking, the music still pounding, the party still raging, but I don’t hear a damn thing.
All I hear is the crack of her bedroom door upstairs.
All I feel is the pull in my chest, dragging me to her whether or not I want it.
I plant myself in the corner, bottle in hand, and try to pretend. Pretend I’m listening to Jax’s bullshit. Pretend I care about the music, the smoke, the girls laughing too loud across the room.
But my head’s upstairs.
Every time I blink, I see Scarlett’s face — streaked with tears, eyes red, shoulders trembling as if the weight of the world were crushing her. And I wasn’t there. I didn’t stop it.
The bottle creaks under my grip. My knuckles ache, white against the glass.
Someone bumps into me, giggling, their perfume sweet and suffocating. I mutter something sharp enough to send them spinning away. Jax glances over, smirking like he thinks I’m brooding over nothing.
If he knew what I was really thinking, he’d never look at me the same. Because all I can picture is whose handsmade her cry like that. Who touched her. Who thought they could evenlookat her like she was theirs.
Heat floods my chest, rage boiling higher until I feel like I could snap every neck in this room just for existing near her.
I drag in a breath, force it out slowly, but it doesn’t help. The anger doesn’t settle. It only festers, crawling under my skin, coiling tight around my ribs.
Every laugh, every cheer, every thump of the bass feels like nails in my skull.
All I want to do is storm upstairs, rip her door open, and see her. Make sure she’s safe. Make sure she’s mine.
I don’t move. Not yet.
I stew, burning alive from the inside, rage licking through me with every second she’s out of my sight.
I know when I finally go up there — I won’t come back down the same.
The laughter grates, the bass thunders, the smoke suffocates. I can’t take another second of it.
I grab a half-full bottle from the counter, the glass slick in my fist, and push through the crowd. Someone calls my name, Jax shouts something behind me, but I don’t stop. I can’t.
Each step up the stairs is heavier than the last, the bottle clutched like a weapon, rage hot enough to burn through the floorboards. All I can see is her face wet with tears. All I can hear is the crack in her voice when she whispered my name in the car.
I shove her door open without knocking, ready to tear the world apart—then freeze.
She’s on the floor.
Scarlett, curled tight against the wall, knees pulled to her chest, face buried, her whole body shaking. The smeared makeup, bunched sweatshirt, and trembling bare legs that peek out beneath the fabric hit me like a blow.
The bottle slips from my hand, thudding onto the carpet. My chest caves, the fury collapsing into something far worse.
‘Scar…’ My voice breaks, raw and low.
She doesn’t lift her head. Doesn’t even flinch. Just shudders like she’s already gone somewhere too far away for me to reach, and it fucking destroys me.
I cross the room in two steps, sink to my knees beside her, and gather her up. She’s weightless, limp, damp with sweat and tears, and when her head drops against my shoulder, I swear something inside me cracks clean in half.
I kick the door shut behind us, shutting out thepounding music, the voices, the world. The room falls silent but for her broken breaths.
Carrying her to the bed, I lay her down gently, brushing the hair from her damp cheeks with hands that won’t stop shaking. My chest aches, my throat burns, my vision blurs, because for all the things I’ve called her—sin, obsession, temptation—right now she just looks fragile, and I don’t know how the hell to protect her from me.
Her sobs don’t stop when I lay her down. They rip through her, raw and jagged, shaking her body until it feels like she might splinter apart in my hands.
