Page 127 of Boy of Ruin
I was never her shelter.
He always was.
“You wanna know how much I missed you?” she asks, surprising me, shaking me out of those dangerous thoughts.
I stiffen, my nails digging into my palm as I take a breath in through my nose. Out. I think about turning around, because I’m close enough to touch her. To hurt her. I’m close enough to do some permanent fucking damage if she breaks my heart again.
“Angel,” Mav says softly, but there’s a warning threaded in his tone.
She ignores him, instead flashing me her white smile at the sound of his voice. Because she knows she can hurt me.
She knows it, and she’s not going to hold back. “When he was fucking me,” she leans closer as my vision seems to blur, an edgy, twitchy feel to my fingers, still balled into fists. “I didn’t think about you once,” she continues, her voice deceptive. Dripping with honey. “I never wished he was you. When he was coming inside of me,” she continues, inching even closer. So close her lavender scent nearly chokes me, because I know he’s smelled it too. He’s tasted her, and her, him. “I wished he’d done it all the times before, too.”
I try to let it roll off of me in the silence that follows her words. I try to take them for what they are—my wife being a selfish fucking bitch. That’s what she is, and that’s probably all she’s ever been. She might’ve had a hard life, and she might’ve gotten fucked over more times than anyone ever deserves, but I did what I could for her.
I killed for her. I bled for her. I would have protected her from every bad thing in the world. But now?
Now, I just want to fucking kill her.
I undo my seatbelt in a blink, before she has time to react, and I’m reaching into the back of the truck, twisted around and half out of my seat as my fingers find her hair, yanking hard.
“The fuck did you just say to me?” I snarl at her. The coke I did before our trip is long gone, and I’m craving it all over again, but the worst part of the comedown is the fucking rage. And that, combined with what my wife just said? I’m ready to hurt her all over again. Tear her to fucking pieces. “What the fuck did you—”
“Lucifer.” Maverick’s voice is low. I notice he’s slowed the truck, but I don’t care. He’s not going to haul me back into my seat. Not after this. He heard what she said.
He knows what that does to me, because he knows exactly how much she fucking means to me.
And her chest heaving and her teeth bared as she glares up at me, I want to break her apart to show her just how I’ve felt without her this past fucking month.
I try to swallow down the rage though as the truck slows and Mav switches lanes. He hasn’t said anything else, but he’s going to stop the car, and that’s not going to go well for any of us because then we’ll really be able to fight it out.
I inhale. Exhale. Maverick keeps driving, but I know one wrong move and he’ll stop.
My eyes search Sid’s, and I’m not holding her tight enough to stop her from breathing, but I kind of wish I was.
“Do you know how much I’ve missed you?” I finally whisper, my mouth inches from hers.
Her brows pull together.
Mav keeps driving.
Neither of them expected that truth.
“I missed you so fucking much, baby girl.” I smooth down her hair, cup her chin. “But you know what Sid?” I lean closer still, press a soft kiss to her mouth, her own rigid beneath mine. “I don’t think I do anymore.”
She’s perfectly still in my hands.
“You’re not who I thought you were,” I tell her, and I want the words angry. Harsh. Painful. But instead, they just come out broken. Snot drips down my nose, to my mouth, and I pull back, darting my tongue over my lip.
She notices, her eyes flicking to my mouth.
I feel my face heat as she sees all the ways I haven’t changed since she left me.
“You’re not who I thought you were either, Lucifer,” she finally says, her voice less angry. More…sad.
My heart cracks with those words.
I feel her throat move beneath my hand as she swallows.
