I began to thrash against the table, fear driving me to overreact. It was a primal instinct. An instinct that made me realize I could never escape my past. It would always be a part of me, and no matter how much I thought I trusted this man, he was still capable of hurting me.
The thick edge of the leather smacked my left breast, and I sucked in air. It wasn’t hard enough to leave a mark, and it was nothing like what he did to the other girl when I watched, but I was terrified it might turn into that. I was terrified he was going to hurt me, and it was something we could never recover from.
“Lucian.” Tears poured down my cheeks as I shook my head back and forth. “Stop.”
He smacked me again, this time on the other breast. “But I’m only just getting started. This is what you wanted, isn’t it? You wanted to be what I need? That’s why you came here, pet. Admit it. After all this time, you’re still trying to prove yourself.”
He smacked my thigh, and it made me jump. His words hurt. They hurt because they were so true.
“You can’t fucking prove yourself,” he snarled viciously. “Don’t you get it? This is the way the world works, pet, and you need to understand that. No matter what you do, no matter how much you want something, the universe will find a way to fuck you over. That’s what you need to learn.”
Whack.
I cringed at the sound of the leather in the air. It didn’t hit my skin, and I wanted to believe he was just using it to scare me, but I wasn’t sure what to believe anymore.
He continued his rant, making short choppy statements that expressed his fresh rage. A rage that seemed to bloom out of nowhere, something I couldn’t identify, and something I had no idea how to fix. There was only one way to get through to him, and I would hate myself for it.
The leather dragged over my skin, looking for the next empty space that he could leave his mark. I felt his hand draw back, and I didn’t know if this would be the time he took it too far, but I was done with this game regardless.
“Dawson,” I wheezed. “Dawson.”
It was the closest thing to a safe word I could think of. And when I heard the clatter of the leather on the ground beside the table, I knew it had worked.
THE ALARM ON MY PHONEwent off at six, the same as every other day. But when my eyes rolled up toward the ceiling from my place on the sofa, it wasn’t just another day.
Instead of defending Emmanuel in court, I’d be making his funeral arrangements. The thought was sobering when I considered that for the past six months, my focus had been on beating this case.
It was never just about winning. My battles in court didn’t bolster my pride. I never counted my cases as victories when, in the end, it never felt like enough. For every case I won, there was another client out there somewhere I couldn’t help.
I was one man, and I was tired.
My body was giving out on me, and I always knew this would be my last case. I’d been overconfident in my abilities to help both Emmanuel and Gypsy at the same time. But in the end, I had failed them both.
The sobering light of morning hadn’t erased my behavior last night. When I followed Gypsy home from the club, she locked me out of the master bedroom, and I didn’t try to soothe the raw wounds I’d created.
Instead, I stood outside the door and listened to her silent sobs as she cried herself to sleep. With every tear that fell on her pillow because of me, it only cemented my belief that I couldn’t be what she needed.
Maybe I’d helped her, and Gypsy would probably graciously say that I had, but it wasn’t enough. It would never be enough. Because she’d made me fall in love with her. She made me want to stay. And every day, I found myself second-guessing my decisions. The path that had once been so clear was now filled with sharp turns and jagged edges I didn’t know how to navigate.
Gypsy Blue thawed my heart and brought me back to life just when I was getting ready to die.
I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and walked down to the guest bathroom. Since my release from prison, my routine had been the only thing that kept me grounded. Every morning, I got up at the same time. I showered and shaved and ate my breakfast, and I went to work. But today, I didn’t have the energy to do any of those things. I didn’t see the point.
I had a funeral to plan. And a woman down the hall who would be better off not seeing me at all. It didn’t make it any easier to walk out on her, knowing that it would hurt her when she woke up and discovered I was gone. But during the process of trying to teach her, I’d learned something about myself.
I was a coward.
And Gypsy, whether she knew it or not, would be better off without me.
“HELLO?”IANSWERED SLEEPILY.
“Are you okay?”
I paused to reflect on the voice I’d just heard before I checked the screen, confirming my suspicions.
“Luna?”
“Yes, it’s me,” she said softly. “Hi.”