Page 53 of Breaking Blaze

“Anna…please, baby…I hate it when you cry,” Blaze murmured into her hair.

“Then you shouldn’t do shit that makes me cry,” she snapped, her energy to be mouthy still high.

“I messed up, I know it. I know I should have at least texted back but…what do I say? I know what you want to hear, Anna, and I know you deserve to hear those things. But….”

But.

This was it. What she should have expected all along.

Blaze was breaking her heart, just like, deep down, she knew he would.

He sucked in a breath against Anna’s cheek, his heart racing. He expelled the breath and tensed. Then, his voice came, the words like a door slamming. “I can’t, Anna…. I just can’t.”

Numb from the chest down, her thoughts striking at her skull like flocks of startled birds, Anna stiffened. Blaze dropped his arms and stepped back, leaving Anna standing there, his warmth gone.

Gone.

Done.

Can’t.

Drawing back her shoulders, Anna pushed one last pulse of strength into her body and pinned him with her gaze, her face expressionless, her voice hard and flat.

“Forget me, Blaze. I never existed to you. I’ve already forgotten you.”

“I’ll take her, too, boy….”

That voice. That evil, maniacal, hideous fucking voice. Echoing. Shifting through the emptiness around him like a snake in the shadows, its fangs out, ready to sink them into his neck. Injecting venom. Injecting death.

Death he more than deserved.

Because he’d hurt the woman he loved more than anything else in the world. He’d made promises—stupid promises. Promises he knew he couldn’t have kept no matter how hard he tried. But he’d done it anyway, because—just once—he wanted something good, pure, beautiful for himself. He wanted her.

His Anna.

But she was gone now. The faint scent of her—fruit, cinnamon, warmth—clung to him, seducing him with its deliciousness. A scent he’d inhaled and tasted on his tongue when he’d finally, finally, made love to her. That scent, the sounds she made as he’d moved inside her, and the flushed perfection of her face were all etched into his heart and mind. Left to torment him now that the memory was all that was left of her.

“I told you, boy…” that voice sneered, cackling. “I told you’d I’d take her, too. And I did. And you let me.”

“No!” he screamed into the vastness, the embodiment of malice brushing against him in the dark. “I didn’t let you have her. I gave her up to save her. I saved her from you!”

Laughter, slimy and miasmic, drifted through the space, sliding through him, thickening his blood with its dank viscosity.

“Yeah, but you did more damage than I ever could, boy. You broke her. You turned all that lovely into ugly all on your own.”

More laughter.

Guilt wrapped in rage welled up, his fists so tight his short nails broke the skin of his palms.

“No. I saved her. I sacrificed everything for her. She has to be alright. She will be fine.” His voice was desperate, his chest heaving with the exertion to draw a breath.

Hecouldn’t be right. He Could. Not. Be. Right. Impossible.

A snort of derision sliced through the viscous air.

“If you hadn’t been such a bastard, none of this would have happened,” Blaze shouted, his throat working to pass the words over the lump of tears stuck inside it. “I could have been happy. I could have spent the last eight years with the woman I love.”

Another snort.

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