tongue, but his red rimmed eyes connect with mine and he says, “I’m in love with you. I’ve only ever been in love with you, Lilith.” His hands are on his knees, and he’s so fucking tall and so strong but sitting on the hardwood floor, crying at my feet, he looks like a child.
“But it…makes everything stop. The sex makes it all…stop.”
“That’s your excuse?” I counter, shaking my head. “Your excuse for fucking her while I’ve been holed away with Mav—”
“I haven’t,” he cuts me off, his eyes narrowing, jaw clenching. “I haven’t fucked her since you’ve been back. Not until tonight.”
“Why?” I ask, wanting to scream. Wanting to hit him again. To shake him. “Why would you do that to me? To us?”
“I wanted to know if it hurt you, as much as it hurt me, thinking of him fucking inside of you.” He stands, comes toward me. His hands come to my face, and he pulls me close as I stay rigid in his arms. “I wanted to know if you ever gave a fuck at all—”
“Get off of me.”
He blinks at me, surprised. So, fucking shocked, because since we’ve met, he’s been calling the shots. Controlling me. Dominating me. Belittling me.
I know he’s going through some shit, but what he did…
“Get the fuck off of me.”
Shocking me, he drops his hands.
Steps back.
Then he groans, a low, throaty sound just before he turns to the television against the wall, opposite the bed, and yanks it off the mount.
He throws it to the floor, the cord unhooking from the outlet, and the sound of it shattering on the hardwood makes me flinch. My limbs feel shaky, and I’m holding my breath, watching him.
He’s not done.
There’s a desk in the corner of the room, a spare laptop plugged into charge. He stalks to the desk, grabs the computer and throws it against the sliding glass door.
My mouth drops open, my pulse pounding in my ears.
He upturns the desk, smashes it into the wall, two of the legs snapping.
“What do you want from me?” he screams, turning to face me, his bare chest heaving. “You fucking run one minute, you cut a girl over me the next? What the fuck do you want, Lilith?”
He brings his hand to his pocket, pulls out a knife, one like I have. One that is mine. He thumbs the blade, brings the tip to his inner forearm, and before I can breathe, he drags it down, hard, blood oozing in the wake of the blade.
“You want me to die for you? You want me to fucking die for you, too?” He keeps dragging it up his arm, another long line of blood dripping, his already pale complexion even more ashen.
My throat closes up, but I cross the room and grab his arms. He tries to fight me, keeping the knife to his skin, but I say his name, over and over and over again, clutching the handle with shaky fingers, and in the struggle, my fingers are coated with his warm blood.
The knife finally falls to the floor between us and I stare in horror at the line he drew. It’s not deep enough to kill him, but crimson contrasts with his pale skin in a way that makes me feel sick.
“What are you doing?” I scream at him, yanking his arms down.
He stares at me through red, bleary eyes, dropping his arms, blood dripping down his fingers, onto the floor.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I scream again, my chest heaving, my mind splintering.
“I just want you,” he says, his voice broken, his shoulders sagging. “I just fucking want you. I’ve always wanted you. It’s always been me and you since I saw you at that intersection, Lilith. But you…” He shakes his head, biting his tongue as he stares at the floor, at the blood.
I think I should grab a towel or a shirt, but I’m rooted to the spot, watching all that blood. All that pain.
After a moment, he lifts his head up. “You want him.”
I can’t breathe as I stare at his grief, meeting his gaze.
“After everything I did for you, all the ways he hurt you…you still want him.”
I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to feel. I know that I love him. That I want him to be okay. That I think I might die if something bad ever happened to him. That if he’d killed himself right here in front of me, I’d probably