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And like Medusa, because I’m wrongly being punished, I want to punish everyone else in retaliation.

I feel Zade behind me before I hear him. Always so silent—always sneaking up on me.

“Your dad is being an asshole, Addie, but she’s going to recover, and he won’t be able to keep her from you,” Zade assures quietly.

What if he gets into her head by then? Convinces her I’m bad for her, and then she decides that I’m not worth loving after all.

And they will always feel that way while I’m with Zade. They will always see him as a bad choice, and as long as I’m with him, they won’t allow me into their lives.

Just when I get the chance to have a real relationship with my mom, it’s ripped away from me. It kind of feels like condensing my entire childhood into one day and making me relive it.

“Maybe you should leave,” I mutter.

A beat passes before he drawls, “You want to repeat that for me, little mouse?”

Clenching my teeth, I bark, “You need to leave.”

I told my mother that Zade would always love me unconditionally, but that love is what almost got her killed. He said it himself—Claire wants me so goddamn badly because of him. Becaus

e of how much I mean to him.

Accepting his love was hard, but I learned to be okay with it when I was the only one in danger. Now, I don’t know if that’s the case anymore. My parents may be assholes, but are their lives worth sacrificing for this shit?

I keep my eyes pinned to the water sparkling in the afternoon glow, but his silence is so powerful, it invades all five of my senses. All six of them, if I’m being honest. Because I can feel how enraged he is.

“You think that’s going to solve all your problems, don’t you?” he chuckles.

I whip around. “Maybe it would. You can kill Claire and all her minions, and I will finally be able to live in peace.”

He cocks a brow, and his eyes have never suited him better until this moment. One so ice-cold, and the other so full of darkness—two dangerous parts of him reflecting onto me.

“This is getting old, Adeline.”

I rear back. “Why, are you mad that you can’t make me obsess over you to the point where I need you by my side every fucking second of the day? Or because you can’t—”

“What, baby? I can’t what? Make you love me? Care about me? Or is it that I make you feel all those things when you don’t want to?”

He gets in my face, anger tightening his scars and amplifying the icy darkness in those yin-yang eyes.

Have you ever come face-to-face with a pissed off bear? Looked into the eyes of the beast as it seethes? Most don’t live to talk about it.

“You think I’m going to believe your little lies? As if I possess an ounce of insecurity.” He ends that last statement with a laugh, and it grinds against my nerves. I feel my face brighten while my eyes darken.

He’s laughing at me, and I want to hurt him. Not with my fists, but with my words. I want him to hate me so he will understand what it feels like to hate someone so much, yet still crave them.

For once, I want him to feel what I fucking felt when he forced his way into my life.

“No, but it will bother you when you find that all your efforts have been wasted.” His smile slips, and I feel my first dose of victory. I take a step into him, enjoying the way he stiffens. “All that time spent, using my body against me in the name of love, only to never make me love you at all.”

This time when he smiles, there isn’t an ounce of amusement. It’s fierce and speaks of a man held with a rope around his neck, faced with the decision to hang himself and save his loved one from the same fate or throw her to the gallows instead.

Is he going to hurt me back in order to protect himself? Or is he going to stand here and take it?

“Oh?” he challenges. “Professing your love and begging me to carve a rose in your chest was for fun?”

He bares his teeth, and my lungs constrict. “Did you get so good at writing books that you don’t know the difference between reality and your imagination anymore?”

I narrow my eyes. “Stockholm syndrome is real. A human reaction to someone constantly threatened. It makes sense to trick our brains into thinking we love the person. If only it makes it easier to tolerate them.”