Page 88 of Betrayal (Corrupt Empire 1)

“I don’t deserve that. I don’t deserve you.”

My heart. My fucking heart constricted. It was me who didn’t deserve her.

“You’ve got that the wrong way around.”

“Do I? I can’t believe that. I don’t want to talk about this. Just leave me be, please. I can’t right now. I just can’t look at you. All I see is what they’ve done. How they’ve hurt you and it kills me so please, please just go.”

She dropped her head back into her legs, clutching her arms around them. I couldn’t see her like this. It fucking broke me. I didn’t know how she could even lump herself in with those sick shits. And she hadn’t even asked me who’d killed my mother or how. She hadn’t asked any questions.

I didn’t want to leave her. I knew deep down she needed me, but I also didn’t want to upset her further. Cause her any more distress.

Fuck. Avery. Fucking hell.

Nothing could make this any better. Why did she have to push me into telling her? She always pushed me so fucking hard.

“Okay, I’ll go, but I’m not shutting you in here. Do you understand?”

She nodded, hugging her legs tighter. I got up and walked out, not closing the door behind me. I only got two feet away before I slid down the wall and sat with my head in my hands.

I hadn’t felt this kind of pain since her. Since I’d seen her hurt, abused, beaten, raped. And now, the girl who fucking turned my world inside out? She fucking hurt and I hurt for her. The pain might be emotional, but it was still real. All of it.

I couldn’t leave her. I needed to know she wasn’t going to have more nightmares. That she wouldn’t hallucinate her parents again. Fuck. What had she done to me? Cleaved my fucking heart in two. Fuck. It shouldn’t hurt this much. None of it should.

If telling her the truth about her family was this fucking awful, then how could I ask her to do what I needed? How could I fucking tell her what I had planned? She’d fucking hate me. Despise me. And I didn’t want that. I wanted her to look at me like I was her everything because I was beginning to realise she was mine. The fucking balm to my bruised, battered and broken soul.

That fucking girl in there. She was mine. My responsibility. I didn’t believe in fucking fantasies of love or soulmates. I didn’t believe in stupid fucking fairy tales. What I believed in was the connection between two people so fucking real. So fucking raw and visceral that one couldn’t be without the other.

And I had that with her.

With her.

Avery.

She was my woman.

Mine.

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