Page 158 of Broken Pieces
This may be the reason for his showering. Scrubbing away perfume, sweat and her fucking hands off his skin before he slides in next to me like nothing happened.
That’s the version of Zane from before we became whatever the fuck this is. The Zane who burned through girls the way he burned through cigarettes, always needing the next hit. But I know he has not touched anyone in months.
Still, that thought burrows in.
Rotten and sharp. It coils low in my gut, heavy with the kind of jealousy that doesn’t have teeth but still tears you up from the inside. I push it down, shove it into the dark corner of my brain where all the other ugly things live.
The water stops. The pipes give one last groan, echoing through the wall like they’re exhausted too.
Then silence. It stretches out until my skin prickles.
The door creaks open a minute later. I keep my back to him, face buried in the pillow, pretending to be asleep—something I haven’t managed for hours.
The bed dips behind me. Sheets lift, and then he’s there.
His chest presses against my back, all heat and muscle, his skin still damp from the shower. His arm snakes around my waist, fingers splaying wide over my stomach. He pulls me into him until my body curves into his on instinct.
His cock is hard against my ass, and it shouldn’t do a damn thing to me. I’m too pissed for this, but I’m already coming undone.
His face tucks into the crook of my neck, breath grazing over my skin in warm, steady puffs. He doesn’t kiss me. Doesn’t whisper my name. Just breathes like I’m his anchor and he’s been drowning all night.
But I’m the one trying not to fall apart.
I want to roll over, shove him back, ask him where the fuck he was, who he’s fucked, and why he thinks he can walk in and press himself against me like this is still okay.
But then his thumb drags slowly across my hip, dragging heat in its wake. I fucking melt. All my tension is leaking into the sheets beneath me.
I hate how good it feels.
I hate that even now, after everything, his touch breaks me open. He still has the power to make me safe and wrecked at the same time.
He holds me tighter, arm banded around my waist. Just him, solid and steady.
Somewhere in that warmth, I let it go. A state of uncertainty. The fury. The fucking ache in my chest. I let it slip, piece by piece, off my skin and into the dark where it can’t hurt me anymore.
I close my eyes and fall asleep in his arms.
The smell hits before anything else. Strong enough to claw me up out of whatever restless sleep I’d fallen into. It curls in the air, punching straight through the dull ache in my chest that hasn’t eased since last night.
Coffee.
I blink, the light through the curtains is soft and warm. Morning’s wrapped in quiet, that early stillness before the noise creeps in.
I can already tell the bed’s empty. The sheets are pushed back, body heat fading fast. My fingers find the spot where he was. It’s not cold yet.
I sit up slowly, every part of me aching with questions I shouldn’t still have. Hair falls over my face, which I move away and gaze up, and there he is.
Zane, standing by the kitchen counter.
Shirtless.
Just a pair of low-slung boxers hanging off his hips, the waistband riding too low, toeing the line of indecent without giving a single fuck. His back’s to me. He’s moving like he doesn’t know I’m watching, shoulders flexing, every muscle carved and tight, veins running down his arms.
But it’s not the way he moves that knots my stomach.
It’s the bruises.
Purple and blue and fucking brutal.
