A sob hit my throat, but I refused to let it free. Maybe it was pride, or perhaps confirmation, but I wasn’t ready to make it real.
“Daph,” Lolly stretched. “It isalwaysyou.”
I laughed. “But the thing is, Lolly,” I dragged a hand down my face. “It’s not.”
“Girl, I’m not following. Threx and Wolfe orbit you. How can you say that?”
“Because it isn’t.” I met her wild brown eyes and held onto them for dear life. “Lolls, think about it. Thay keeps me, but he won’t fuck me. He won’t touch me or go anywhere near feelings that veer outside whatever fated coexistence we share. And Wolfe, he’ll fuck me, sure. All night. On a scale from one to ten, until I can’t breathe or exist. But the one thing he refuses to do is keep me. So, no. It is never me.”
“Goddammit, Daphne,” Wolfe growled behind Lolly, nearly knocking her down the stairs. “It is not like that.”
Lolly dropped her gaze, giving me an apologetic look before scrambling away to find Kade.
“Fuck you, Silas!” I swallowed, pulling his birth name like a goddamn trigger and wishing I had something else to throw. “It is exactlylike that! And you know it.”
I turned to sprint down the long hallway, sweeping past Thay’s door on the left. Usually, I would pause to admire the nuances of their private spaces. But not today. They could burn for all I cared.
“Would you stop?” he shouted after me, picking up the pace. “You are behaving like a child.”
“Says the lying, cheating asshole whose dick just got caught in his zipper!” I flared, pushing faster toward the lone door at the end of the hall.
“Goddammit, Daphne,” he stomped forward, crushing the spine of the wooden planks beneath his boots. “I said, stop.”
“I don’t give a fuck. What you say no longer matters, Wolfe,” I seethed when I hit the wall, turning to fight. “Not in my head. Not in my heart. And sure as shit not in my body.”
His feet slammed to a halt when my words struck him straight in the stomach.
“You have no right to tell me to stop. Or to come. Because I don’t belong to you anymore.” I aimed lower, and Wolfe stepped forward. “And you know what? Maybe I never did.”
Wolfe’s chest collided with mine, pinning me against the peeling shiplap sliding off the wall. I felt his heart thunder beneath his ribs, straight into my own, before I pushed again.
“I refuse to be complicit.” I shot him a glare. “I won’t be your side fuck. So whatever this is, or was,” I tilted my chin, holding my ground, “is over. Now,” my voice cracked, “let me go.”
I didn’t believe it, even as the words came tumbling out of my mouth. This man would always belong to me, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about that. But I could pretend. It was my superpower.
Wolfe’s eyes went wide as he pressed his forehead to mine, threatening to undo me completely.
“You are not the other woman, Daphne. She is.”
I shut myself off, shaking my head in protest. Was this supposed to make it all better? Words that didn’t mean a goddamn thing?
“As the leader of this club, I have to check boxes, and what happened with Molly last night is another clear sign I need a queen. Someone to manage all the broken shit I don’t see, because I am only one goddamn person. And she is not bad. Lyla doesn’t do drama; she doesn’t get jealous, and unlike you, stationing her at my side would improve her quality of life instead of ruining it.”
I broke. I did not give a shit about his cold math or the way the numbers played out in his head. Every bit of me was breaking.
“You might love me,” he said through a sad smirk, “but you didn’t choose me, either, Daph. Or this.”
And there it was, the punch I had been waiting for.
Crack.
“You left. But if you are drawing a line between her and you…” His eyes searched mine, drinking in any remaining flecks of light I had left. “Then she is dead.”
“Stop,” I whispered, trying to look away, but his hands swept up my throat and held me still.
“I’ll march down those stairs right now and throw her ass into the street because she is just a fucking checkbox. One I used last night to get the memory of you off my cock,” he growled. “It did not work.”
“Yeah, well,sheis wearing my goddamn shirt,” I pushed back through a cracked sob, turning my head to avoid how beautiful he was.