Page 86 of The Pretty Savage

"I know you're angry," I said calmly, keeping my hands up in the air. "But if you would just allow me to explain, then you would?—"

"No." She shook her head. "Had you really wanted to explain anything, you would've done that already. If any of what you said was the truth, I would've known by now that you already had all the info about me, my past, my entire life. But that wasn't the objective of your mission, Adrian, was it? Your objective was to eliminate the threat, and that threat is me."

She truly believed I was the monster. She truly believed I would spend days and nights caring for her, begging some invisible force to make her better, to have her look at me with that mischief in her eyes, just so I could kill her? She disregarded the connection between us, believing in the story she created in her head.

But I wasn't going to let us end up like this. I wasn't going to let her run away, because that was exactly what she wanted to do. I could see it in her eyes. She made up her mind about me, without even talking to me, without even trying to understand.

And I understood why. God, I hated it, but I understood why. The world we lived in made us harder, distrustful, jaded, and at the first sign of trouble we always had to assume the worst. But I thought she felt the same as I did. I thought she recognized a kindred soul in me and felt my words deep inside her chest.

I refused to believe this was the end. I refused to believe she would walk out of here, thinking there was no future for us, or that I betrayed her.

I withheld the truth maybe longer than I should have, but that didn't mean I was lying to her.

Removing my gun from my belt, I walked toward her, keeping my eyes on hers the entire time. She trembled, afraid of me, which hurt more than any other word she might have said.

My hand wrapped around her wrist, shaking out the knife she held, and before she could do anything, I pushed my gun to her hand, removing the safety from it. Her eyes widened, her breathing accelerating with each new move I made, and before long, I wrapped my hands around the gun, pressing it to my chest as she held it.

"W-What are you doing?" she stammered, her eyebrows arched high, confusion plastered to her face. "Adrian, step away. I will?—"

"What?" I frowned. "Shoot me? Come on then, Bambi. Pull the fucking trigger. Show me you feel nothing for me but hatred. Show me that all these nights and days were a lie. Come on. This is why they sent you here, why you came to the Academy. To destroy me, to find all my secrets. Well, you know them now. You know almost everything there is to know about me."

"I—"

"Pull it!" I roared, feeling the barrel of the gun pressing against my chest.

"I can't!" she screamed, her eyes filled with unshed tears, burning right into mine. "I can't, you fucking bastard. I can't kill you," she whispered, her voice raspy, broken. Her eyes closed, but her hold on the gun never ceased. "I can't kill you, because a part of me still wants to believe you aren't just another person set on my path to destroy me." She opened her eyes, obliterating me on the spot with all the pain shining in them. "But I will never trust you again. I will never trust another person as much as I have trusted you. I have a million reasons to kill you, and I can't fucking do it because you have managed to slither into my bloodstream, and killing you would be like killing a part of myself, and I can't do that. I can't lose more of myself, more of my soul, because there would be nothing left."

My heart broke for her, for the little girl she once was and for the woman she was now. I moved fast, pulling her into my embrace and pressing her head to my chest as her entire body shook from the strength of her sobs, holding her through the worst of it.

"Vega—"

"You need to let me go, Adrian," she whispered, her arms slack by her sides.

"I can't," I said, refusing to even think about it. "I can't let you go. I don't want to."

"You have to," she pressed, slowly pushing herself from me. She straightened up as I let her go, her tears creating rivers of sorrow on her face, but the hard look she gave chilled me to the bone. "You're looking for love in the wrong place, darling, because I have none left to give."

She was pushing me away because she was hurt, but she had to understand. I had to make her understand.

She was mine, goddammit, and I was hers, whether she wanted me or not. I would follow her to the end of the world if she wanted me to, but I wasn't letting her go.

"I'm not a good man, Bambi," I sputtered. "Everyone knows it. Even you know it. If I were a good man, I would let you go. I would listen to you and let you walk out without a second glance, but I'm not good. Not even a little bit, and I'm not letting you go. You're telling me I'm looking for love in the wrong place, and I think you are wrong. You are my home, Vega. You make me feel. You woke me up from the deep slumber I've been stuck in for the last few years and I'm not going back to how I used to be. I'm not going back to a world without you in it."

Her chin lifted defiantly, the hand that held the gun shaking, but her tears weren't flowing anymore and I had no idea if it was a good thing to have her standing this stoically in front of me or not. "What you want doesn't matter anymore, Adrian. I have spent my life fulfilling wishes and dreams of others, following their paths and helping them reach their goals. And I'm done." She took a deep breath and walked right next to me, placing the gun on the table next to the files I had on her. "You should've killed me when you had the chance," she said over her shoulder, looking at me with so much indifference, hitting me worse than if she had punched me in the face. "Now I know what you are. Now I know what all of you are. Just a bunch of liars set out to fool me, to use me, to?—"

"Are you even listening to me!" I yelled out, done with the little tirade she was on. "I just bared my soul to you. I told you everything, I?—"

"You told me everything you thought I would want to hear!" she roared. "You told me everything you thought the little girl that was abandoned by everyone would want to hear. But I'm not that little girl anymore, and I'm not going to let you break me just so you can gain something from it."

There was no reasoning with her, not when she was like this. She was running from me, from the feelings she was probably experiencing. I recognized it because I tried to do the same, but I wasn't going to let her. It was easier for her to just give me the title of the bad guy and call it a day, hating me for something I hadn’t done than facing the reality.

And the reality was she was falling for me as much as I was falling for her.

"Vega, please," I pleaded with her as she moved toward the coat hanger, pulling hers off of it. "Don't leave. Don't do this. I'll explain everything, just… Just stay with me. I'm begging you." My hand wrapped around her wrist as her eyes cut to me, her lower lip trembling, but she didn't drop the coat. She didn't try to understand.

"You had your chance, Adrian, and you fucking blew it." Vega ripped her arm away from mine, stumbling backward, slowly balancing herself before putting on the coat.

"You don't get to do this, Vega." I was breathing hard, panic clawing at my insides, but I couldn't—no, I didn't want to imagine my life without her. "You're running away from me. Running away from what you feel, and you know I'm not the villain in this story. You know that if I wanted you dead, you would've been dead days ago." Her eyes flashed with a newfound anger, and I knew that was the wrong thing to say. "I don't want you gone. Please. Just talk to me, let me explain."

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