I shrugged, bitterness rising in my throat. "I think I prefer to be a bargaining chip than a possession."
His jaw tightened and his hand balled to a fist, but he didn't disagree with me. No matter how much he clearly wanted to.
I turned to walk away again, needing to create some physical distance between us. The longer I stood there talking to him, the fresher the memories were becoming—and not the ones that would help me maintain my righteous outrage, either. They were the memories of all the sweet things he'd done or said, of the gentle music he’d played while I slept in his bed, or of the way he’d worshipped my body.
"Madison Kate," he called out as my hand reached for the glass door to the foyer. I paused, turning slightly to look back at him, still straddling his black motorcycle. "I understand that you need time and space right now, but you need to know... I'm not giving up on us. Not now, not ever." My pulse raced and my chest tightened. "I know I fucked up, we fucked up. But we're not going anywhere, and we'll do whatever it takes to fix this."
Frustration reared its ugly head, and I let it. Better that than the alternatives. "You can't fix this, Steele." I flung my arms out wide, trying to encompass everything that was broken. "Sometimes you just need to write off the truck and start over."
"You're not a fucking truck, MK." Steele's eyes hardened to granite, his jaw clenching in anger at my shitty analogy. I turned my back on him, not wanting to continue this conversation in public... or at all.
His motorcycle roared to life as I let the foyer door swing shut behind me, and I stalked over to the elevators without glancing back. As much as I hated to admit it, he'd dented my armor. I needed a solid bitch session with Bree to hammer the dents out and prepare for another onslaught the next day.
I wasn't stupid enough to think they'd give up so easily, and a small—okay, not so small—part of me was glad for that. As angry as I was, as hurt and heartbroken as they'd made me, I hadn't magically lost those feelings that had been developing before the truth bomb dropped. I wasn't fucking over them.
Any of them.
The elevator doors slid open on my floor, and I found my new neighbor on his way out of his apartment.
"Hey Cass," I greeted him, trying to wipe the torrent of emotions off my face. The Reapers weren't my friends, and I wasn't about to go giving them anything to use against me later. Well... anything more than they already knew.
The ink-covered man just scowled at me. Also known as his resting fuck-you face. It was like a resting bitch face but seven hundred times more threatening and intimidating.
"You look angry," he commented in a growl like breaking rock.
I hitched a brow, faintly amused. "Yeah, you could call it that."
Cass continued staring at me while I fished my keys out of my bag and unlocked my door. When he didn't say anything more, I paused with my hand on the door frame and cocked my head to the side.
"Is there something you need to say?"
His frown dipped a fraction deeper, if that was possible. "You got shit to do right now?" he asked, surprising the hell out of me. I’d thought he was just going to comment on... I dunno. The weather?
"Um," I replied, thinking about my bitch session with Bree, which could definitely wait. "No, not really. Why?"
The scary-ass gangster dude just nodded his head, like he'd made his mind up about something. "Grab a change of clothes," he instructed me. "You can vent some of that rage on a punching bag."
My brows shot up, and I quickly took in his work-out clothes and the duffel bag slung over his shoulder. Clearly, I'd caught him on his way to the gym.
"Hurry up," he added as I stood there gawking. "I don't have all day."
Curiosity—as always—won out in my brain, and I hurried into my new apartment to get changed. I barely had anything of my own, having walked out of my father's mansion—or Archer's mansion—with nothing but the clothes on my back. I'd been keeping a ledger of what I owed Bree, despite her insistence that I didn't need to pay her back, just the same as I was keeping a ledger of what I