Page 20 of The Piece You Stole

He rises to his feet in one smooth motion.

There’s no change in his expression, but the sound my heart makes pounding against my chest is like someone smashing two cymbals together. If Nathan hears it, his unchanging expression reveals no sign of it.

His grace is too perfect.Unnatural. It’s just another reminder that I might be sitting opposite someone who wears the shape of a man, but he isn’t. Not really.

He places his glass on the table. Eyes locked on me, he picks up his steak knife.

My heart pounds even harder.

As he rounds the table toward me, I press myself further back in my seat, cold leather cooling the bare skin on my shoulders, my gaze fixed on the small serrated blade with the wood handle in his right hand.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. Why couldn’t you have just kept your mouth shut?

He won’t kill me. I know he won’t kill me. Not with Rylan in the next room. Even if we were alone, he still wouldn’t do it. But there are so many things a person can do that makes them wish they were dead.

I grip my armrest, my palms sweating as he prowls closer, his face an impenetrable mask.

Just before he reaches me, a voice whispers in my head that I should call Rylan for help. I strangle the voice. The only thing calling Rylan would do is give me more attention that I don’t want.

Nathan drags me out of my chair with terrifying ease before perching me on the edge of the dining table. He releases me the moment he’s got me where he wanted me because, just like he said, he serves his alpha, and Rylan told him to keep his hands to himself.

“You have the rest of them convinced you would climb out of the nearest window and throw yourself from it at the first opportunity,” Nathan says, holding the steak knife low by his side. I try to focus on his words and not what he’s doing with the blade, but my mind keeps pulling at me to look. “But I know otherwise.”

Something jabs me hard in my thigh. Jumping, I jerk my head down as I wait for the pain to kick in. But there’s no pain and no blood because Nathan didn’t stab me, he poked me with the dark, wood handle.

When I lift my head, I’m not the least bit surprised to find him studying me with dark amusement.

“I look into your eyes and I know you don’t want to end it at all. If I were to hand this knife over to you, you would try to stab me with it. Wouldn’t you?”

I snap my hand out, palm side up. “I disagree. Should we see what I’ll do?”

He blinks as if I’ve surprised him. “You’re a little more spirited than you were before,” he murmurs. “Was it the doctor, or was it the bar owner?”

“Give me the knife and I’ll be happy to prove you wrong,” I say because we arenottalking about Simon, who had his throat ripped out trying to help me. And we arenottalking about Kade, who made me feel a little less broken. I don’t dare let myself think of Aden, who gave me a taste of normal, a thing I hadn’t even realized I was missing. That way lays madness as well.

My mind shies away from Dad, who might not have treated me well but didn’t deserve to have Nathan knocking at his front door.

So many things I can’t let myself think about. Too many.

“The doctor, I think,” Nathan says. “Did he crawl into your heart and break it?”

I lunge for the steak knife.

Smiling, he wrenches it aside. This one is dark and cruel. A true Nathan smile. “Yes. The kind doctor who lied to the cops and made more visits than was strictly necessary for the tragically scarred girl.”

As I stare at Nathan, a thought takes root in my mind.

It grows.

And it grows.

There are some moments you know will live in your mind forever. Most of the memories I have of Mom, the ones that haven’t faded, cling to me. But mostly, it’s the bad ones that wrap me so tight it’s like they're determined to choke me. The first time Dad hit me is one. It was after he’d kicked everyone out of Mom’s wake so he could finish his bottle of whiskey in peace without dealing with the judgmental stares he felt everyone was giving him. Rylan picking me up from the Stationers Diner floor was another. Baldaccio’s…

Thismoment, Nathan looking into my eyes, taunting me with Simon Trevor’s kindness as if it made him weak. This one will live on in my memory forever.

“You didn’t spread your legs for him,” Nathan adds, eyeing me curiously as if I’m a puzzle he’s busy putting together in his mind. “I would have known. So perhaps you went to your knees for the kind doctor and gave him such a big thrill he forgot all about his rules and regulations and said fuck it, I’m going to tuck this girl away in my apartment, and we’ll live happily ever after?”

My lips tighten as I will myself to say nothing. To do nothing. Because there’s nothing I can do. At least, not now. But later…

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