Page 28 of The Last Time You Break Me

I finally worked out one of those twisted tornadoes of emotion that I promised myself I would decipher.

Regret.

He held it in abundance. The thing was, I held it too.

“Don’t you think I’ve wanted to let you in? After all of these years, that I wanted to let down those walls?” My voice wavered, regret heavy in my emerald eyes. “The very ones you helped me build? But in the end…” Unshed tears welled in my sorrow-ridden gaze but I shut it down. My face was set, as hard and cold as stone, as I stared back at him and found my resolve wavered. “The thought of beinghumiliatedby you, outweighed the potential ofeverbeing loved by you.”

Heartache churned with reproach, it grew thicker and thicker until it consumed his dark depths and the first crack in my armor appeared. I’d nevernotunderstood why he held so many barriers between us. What we felt, well, it wasn’t exactly written in the stars and easy to declare.

It was always brutal and raw, written in blood and signed with the end of our days.

Especially living in a world like this.

But that was what made it real.

That it was a love worth fighting for. Yet he never saw my soul as worth the fight at all.

When I was younger though, I’d never understood how a man I had seen conquer the world could never conquer his fear.

Who could never be the man I needed him to be and put me and what we could have had first.

We weren’t the first age-gap, forbidden and fucked up romance scripted into the world and we damn sure wouldn’t be the last.

He had a choice.

I was ready to step into the storm. Woman enough to fight for my core desire.

My heart’s delicate flutter.

He hid.

He lied.

And he broke me long before the death of my mother brought down the hammer that shattered my coffin and decimated my remains.

“It’s cute, her little infatuation with you, Reg. If only her little heart knew the way your old ass fucked women into comas,” My dad’s voice chuckled through the crack in his office doorway as I lingered there, having wanted to speak with him and instead overhearing a conversation that broke my heart.

“Cute? Dom, it’s a pain in the ass. It’s like having a damn Chihuahua nipping at your heals every fucking second of the day,” Reggie grunted in reply. Disgust heavy in his voice.

“Watch it, prick. That’s my fifteen-year-old daughter you just called a dog,” my father snapped back shortly with a hard edge to his tone in warning, but the humor was still there.

They both thought I was a joke.

“You know what I mean, man. Try getting laid when you have a brat trailing your every move. Ila came around with her hot mouth ready and fucking waiting and your daughter burned her!”

“Don’t go breaking her heart now, or I might just have to break your face, my brother.” My dad laughed and I could hear the sound of liquid being poured into a glass as it swooshed around the rim. “Ila shouldn’t have been standing so close to the stove. Accidents like that happen.”

“She was looking for the champagne and Lara shoved her until she fell face first onto the damn burner on the stove!” Reggie replied in indignation.

“That was Gracie’s fault, an oversight. She was the chef. She shouldn’t have had the stove lit without a pan on it,” my father defended around another chuckle. That one was heavy and sounded like it came from his core, like he found me so damn funny, he had to bend over with the ache of humor I brought to their night. “I’ll talk to the boys, tell them to spend more time with their sister.”

Reggie grunted in reply.

“Lara,” he rasped.

“Don’t. It’s too late, Reg. I’m not that girl anymore. The girl who would have given you everything,” I whispered as I tried to step away as I shook off the memory. But he held me close, muscles tight as they coiled around me in an unyielding shield of strength and conviction.

“Look, I know that I was an asshole. The things that I said to you? Don’t you think I regret them? That I have regretted them, every single day since?”

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