Page 68 of Hellfire

“Nope,” he quipped.

“I want to be alone.”

His blue eyes burned brighter. “And I’m not going to leave you alone like this.”

I straightened, indignant and outright offended. “Like what?”

“Unpredictable and borderline manic,” he stated without hesitation.

My voiced pitched. “Borderline manic? Are you fucking serious?”

He lifted his palms to placate my rising temper. “All I’m saying is that I don’t think it’s safe for you to be left on your own right now. Christ, Hells, you’ve been holding it all in for two weeks and thank fuck you’ve finally let it out.”

“I wasn’t holding anything in. I was coping.”

“You weren’t fucking coping! You were just going through the motions while ignoring it all.”

I prowled closer and encroached into his space. “I haven’t been ignoring it. I’ve been processing it.”

“Two hourly meetings with Lorna per week isn’t enough when you shove it all back down after you end the call. But you know what? You’re now one less breakdown away from getting through this.”

“It’s not a fucking breakdown, Avery!”

He set his hands on his hips and goaded me with a condescending chin lift. “We landed stateside two weeks ago, and this is the most emotion you’ve shown the entire time. It took longer than I expected.”

“Don’t fucking patronize me,” I spat out on a furious, and completely humorless, ghost of a laugh.

“I’m not patronizing you, Hells. I’m stating facts.”

“You’re not. You’re being an asshole because you’ve been stepping on eggshells around me for the last two damn weeks!”

He threw his hands wide, and his expression turned wide-eyed and incredulous. “I’ve been busting my ass to support yours. That’s not a fucking vacation, trust me.”

I rounded on him, and he backed up, suspicious and expecting me to launch. “I never asked you to take me in. I never asked for you to pull yourself from the class and take leave. I never fucking asked for anyof it,” I yelled.

“That’s because you’re so fucking stubborn!” he boomed back.

“Asshole!” I surged forward. Avery anticipated my lunge and met me head-on.

We both refrained from lashing out, barely, but wrestled and shoved until we were both heaving and breathless again.

I bucked when he secured my arms behind my back and my head collided with his face. A cry of pain tore from his mouth, then I heard him spitting.

Having lit his dynamite, he shoved me against the nearest tree and pressed the side of his forearm to my neck. Wrath like I’d seldom seen darkened his normally light eyes and despite him still spitting blood, his teeth ground together so hard, I heard the chalky squeak.

“You don’t get to play the victim anymore,” he panted. “Shift your fucking mindset, van Staden, before you can’t.”Can’twas punctuated with a shove that compressed my esophagus further and had me coughing.

His expression then slipped from anger to raw distress. “You’re literally right in front of me, but I’m so fucking worried that I’ll never truly have you back. Fight, Hallie. Please fight to come back to me, babe.”

I closed my eyes against the pain in his gaze. The pressure on my throat eased, then his hands cupped my face. My eyes opened, bringing us nose-to-nose, sight-to-sight, and dared me to deny that I was lost and fighting to find my way home.

“I fucking love you, Hells,” Avery breathed out, voice achingly raw. “Love you so fucking much that I’m sick with worry, and I don’t know what else to do.”

His thumbs rhythmically swiped away the fresh wave of tears cascading down my cheeks.

“I love you too, and I’m sorry.”

He shook his head. “I’m not asking you to be sorry. I’m begging you to stop pushing me away.”

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