Page 59 of Worth

She notices me before I have the chance to say anything. In the span of a breath, she chucks the book to the ground and scrambles out of the chair. I can feel her fury as she draws closer, her feet stomping.

I drop to my knees before she makes it to me, my head bowed, my arms resting on my thighs with palms up. I feel her falter, close enough to slap me if she wanted to.Iwant her to. I need to be punished.

“Do it,” I whisper. “Take out your anger on me. I deserve it. I didn’t mean to leave you for so long. But I did. Make me pay.”

There’s silence. It lasts long enough that I lift my head so I can see if she’s even still in the room. She is standing a few steps back from where she stopped when I offered myself to her. Her hands are balled into fists at her sides, a war of anger and sorrow occurring in the expression on her face.

“It’s okay, Kitten,” I tell her. “You have every right to be angry with me.”

I don’t mean to let them slip, but two tears—one from each eye—track down my face. I don’t wipe them away and she tracks them until they drip from my chin onto my shirt. When they do, her gaze snaps back up, meeting mine.

But she still doesn’t say a word. Silently, she moves back to the book on the floor and sets it on the chair. Turning her back on me, she goes down the stairs and out of sight.

As soon as her footsteps fade, I break down, letting the dam holding back my tears fall. Kitten just punished me the harshest way she could have. I could have taken slaps or punches; kicks or scratches. What I can’t take is her giving up on me.

And that’s exactly what it feels like she did.

I stomp through the house, looking for…

I don’t know what the fuck I’m looking for.

Rages have come and gone for more than a week. Once my strength had improved, Claire had left, giving me a phone number in case I ever needed her again. The problem was, her leaving had left me alone with Zander.

Zander, since finding me abandoned, had his moments of seeming to actually fucking care. Really, he was still a snobby prick, despite my dance with seven days of isolation and hunger.

Or at least he is when he hasn’t managed to avoid me.

One day, I’d been in the kitchen making lunch when he walked in. As soon as he realized that I was in there, he looked more inclined to run away than stay. But then he barged in anyway, gotten in my way, and then snapped at me when I snapped at him for using the rest of the lunchmeat.

But honestly? Underneath the venom he spewed seemed to be things like regret and misery. Or maybe I just assumed that since he’d yet to lock me in again.

My freedom to roam around the house allowed me to observe Zander when he didn’t think anyone was watching. I’d listened to the dozens of voicemails he left for Aiden. Some were demanding; some were worried; some were downright pitiful, begging Aiden to come back.

And Aiden finally did, two days ago.

When I saw him standing there, his eyes wild and bloodshot, the anger that had been brewing with Zander boiled over. I wanted to grab him by the throat and shake some goddamn sense into him. I wanted to make him feel hurt and scared and alone, just like he had done to me by leaving me locked in.

I wanted to make Aiden bleed.

But when he had dropped to the floor without guarding himself in the slightest—in fact, opening up himself to be punished—some very small rational part of me had stalled that line of thinking. Not because he didn’t deserve some sort of walloping for forgetting about me, but because I could see myself in him. In that moment, with all of his guards down, I could see into Aiden deeper than I ever had. He was as broken as I was, but hidden by a shadow of insanity.

Maybe my brokenness was concealed by insanity, too.

Either way, it had left me unable to punish him. Because punishing him would have been like punishing myself.

On the other hand, I didn’t want to forgive him. Zander either. I wasn’t sure I could. I had been abandoned my entire life. To be abandoned by the two men who had seemed to have some semblance of caring about me? That had done something to my brain.Ihad let them in enough to give them the power to hurt me.Ihad set myself up to be fucked over.Ikept giving the same answers to the same questions and expecting a different outcome.

When had I ever known a man who hadn’t used, hurt, or abused me?

Yet I just keep stepping out on faith that not every person in this world was a shitty one, and I keep going along with it out of desperation to not feel alone. I deserve better.

I always have.

And so, when I’m not in a rage, I’ve spent my free time over the last couple of days fucking with Aiden and Zander in any way I can.

Juvenile? Yes.

Satisfying? Absolutely.

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