“You need to leave.”
“I’m in love with you, Livvie.”
It sliced right through him but she ignored that too.
“You need to leave now, Sebring.”
He took another step toward her. “Baby, I’m in lo—”
Suddenly, she leaned toward him, for the first time letting loose the formidable temper he’d sensed, but she’d never lost control enough to let go, and in a shrill voice that pierced through his brain and his heart, she shrieked, “You need to leave now, Sebring!”
The pain in each syllable scoring away his flesh, he stopped moving and winced.
He forced a quick recovery and whispered, “Please come to me, Livvie, so I can explain.”
“You need to leave. You need to leave. You need to fucking leave!” she shouted.
“Let me come to you.”
“Leave!” she screeched.
The ice was gone but the pain was worse.
He had to get in there.
“I couldn’t go through with it. That’s why I ended things with you. You got under my skin, Liv. And obviously,” he lifted both hands slightly at his sides, careful of even that move, the situation volatile, the outcome meaning everything, he was going cautious to the extreme, “I couldn’t get you out.”
He watched as she visibly tightened her entire frame, pulling it together, pushing him out.
“She’s gonna hurt you,” she declared. “She’s got acid in her veins, my sister. You’re a threat and she’ll eliminate you. She doesn’t care. She put her father out there for murder. He’ll never breathe free again. Her father. She won’t blink at taking you down.”
He started moving slowly toward her again. “I’ll be fine. You’ll be fine. We’ll figure it out. We gotta do it with her, we’ll figure it out with your sister.”
“Do not come an inch closer to me, Sebring,” she warned. She was losing it again, her tone suddenly feral, the green in her eyes flashing.
He had that, not the ice, he could work it.
He had to.
So he kept moving.
“I fell in love with you, Liv.”
“That’s impossible.”
“It isn’t. It happened. And you—”
“It’s impossible because there is no me to fall in love with. I don’t exist.”
That made him stop moving.
She continued speaking.
“I breathe. I’m here. I take up space. I eat. I drive. But I have no brain. No will. No strength. No opinions. I do not matter to the point I do not exist.”
“You exist for me.”
“I didn’t when you targeted me as your in to destroy my family,” she returned immediately and unfortunately fucking accurately, going on the same way, “I can only assume you knew I had no dealings with that. You could, I’m sure, perform for a woman who was simply a tool. If you thought I had a part in trafficking humans and murdering your girlfriend, not even you could set that aside so completely as to perform so convincingly and repeatedly.”