Page 45 of Cursed to Be Mine
And then he grips her throat and squeezes.
Her eyes bug wide.
Her face starts to grow red, then blue.
But she doesn’t struggle.
Just glares at him until her eyes flutter.
And then her knees buckle.
Daniel lets her drop to the floor, stepping back with a glance at his father.
She gasps for breath. I jolt forward, but as I kneel and reach for her, she shoves my arm away. “Don’t...touch…” She struggles for air, her body quaking on the concrete floor. “Me.”
“I’m just trying to help.”
“Fuck…you.”
My hands balling into fists, I fight the urge to grab her hair and yank her to her feet. The ungrateful shit only thinking about herself. Doesn’t she know how much I’m hurting?
Twenty-four hours.
That’s all I have.
And I’m spending it here,with herbecause she’s my fucking daughter.
She’s my daughter.
Pushing to my feet, I step away from her. Cross my arms over my chest. “Are you okay?” I ask her softly.
She doesn’t answer as she crawls to the Lexus, then uses it to climb to her feet. In heart-stabbing silence, she opens a back door and climbs in.
I swallow hard.
Daniel reaches for me, but I step away from him, no longer yearning for his touch. Continuing to my car, I get into the driver’s seat. “I’ll text you about the meeting tomorrow,” I tell Derek hoarsely.
He nods, opens the garage door, and watches us drive away. The tinted windows hide Scarlett from view, but at this time of night, no one’s out anyway.
Silence boils the air between us, prickling my skin and heating the walls of my throat until it all melts together. Verbal fingernails claw for the exit, scratching up in their desperation to be heard. But the rage burning off Scarlett keeps them trapped.
I swallow, flicking my tongue across my mouth, trying to get it to work. It isn’t until I turn onto our street that I manage to blurt, “I’m sorry about tonight.”
She seethes in silence for a moment. Each word pulled from her, she hisses, “You tried...to kill me.”
“I couldn’t risk you turning. Your soul would’ve been damned for eternity.”
She spins towards me, spittle flying along with her arms. “So you, what? Decided toexecuteme without even checking?”
“You were bleeding. And I saw his mouth –”
“He yanked me out of the fucking window!”
I flinch as I pull onto our drive. “I didn’t –”
Shoving open her door, she steps out.
I scramble after her, undoing my belt, but she doesn’t head for the house. She heads for me, grabbing at my hands. Taken by surprise, I can’t hold on to the keys as she rips them from my fingers. Grabbing my shirt, she yanks me out of her way, shoving me to the ground.
