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“When the hell did you give her your number?”

“I…I did—”

“Don’t lie to me,” he shouted, taking the last two steps to bring him by my side. He crowded over me, placing his hands on each side of my head, trapping me against the headboard. “When?”

The pressure on my chest came back the more he intimidated me. It reminded me of the night in the hotel, but this was different, his anger seemed more dangerous. Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath, trying to calm my racing heart. “I just dropped it off. I didn’t even see her.”

“Are you kidding me? When did you leave? When did you have time?”

The more I became acclimated to being awake, the more my panic shifted to anger. How dare he use his size to corner me in bed in the middle of the night? It was pissing me off and I relied on the rage rather than cowering.

“One of the many nights you think you lock me in while you go fuck your way through women,” I sneered. The image of him fingering that woman came roaring back.

“Why? Why did you do it?” His tone was marginally softer, but the heat of his anger still barreled down on me.

“She’s my sister.”

“She’s a waste.”

“Shut up,” I shouted.

“She will use you,” he shouted back. “She will ruin you and you’re too fucking stupid to see it.”

“Stop calling me that,” I yelled, shoving him back. He barely moved, but the whole day was piling up and I was on the brink of explosion.

Him calling me stupid hit harder than it had before because I felt stupid. I knew the decisions I made were mistakes and they were done without thinking about the reality of a situation. I’d given Leah the number in hopes she’d get better and come to me. I’d held out hope for Erik because I’d wanted to believe in the best situation, not the real one.

“Then stop acting like it.” He stood up and stepped back. My vision blurred and I dropped my eyes to the carpet at his feet. “Delete the messages and the number and never answer her again. Cut your ties as long as you’re here. You might be fine wasting your time, but I’m not. I won’t help you if you keep choosing to fuck it up and work against me.”

“She’s my sister,” I defended again, wanting it to mean more than it did.

“Open your eyes, Alexandra. She’s a cancer and she’s using you.”

When I didn’t continue to fight, he flipped the lights off and closed the door like he’d never even been there.

I scrolled through the messages. There were more than what I’d read as Erik stood over me. Over an hour, Leah had sent probably fifteen messages, each one getting meaner than the last.

Maybe Erik was right. Maybe I needed to be more realistic and make my decisions based on the things around me, not what I wanted to happen.

My wants didn’t matter.

They never had.

16

Erik

Another week and I was no more comfortable with Alexandra than I’d been since that first kiss.

Only this week, a new emotion had been added to the mix. Guilt.

I hated emotions.

And I’d felt more in the past month since she’d been here than I had in the past five years. Desire, frustration, confusion, want. All of them had mixed in a chaotic cocktail I was losing control of. Guilt was the most recent.

I didn’t usually question my actions, I made them with confidence. But I questioned the way I’d hurt Alexandra intentionally. I’d wanted her to catch me with another woman, and not just walking away on a date. I wanted her to see me intimate with another woman because words hadn’t been working. Add in how angry I’d been at my inability to fully distance her from me, and I was a bomb waiting to explode.

I hated that I still smiled with pride when she did something correct. I hated that I couldn’t stop staring at her and getting lost in thinking about all the things I wanted to do to her. I hated that she caught me staring. After the way I’d treated her Saturday night, she should have rolled her eyes and told me to fuck off when she caught me staring. Instead, she smiled with a flush staining her cheeks.

So, I’d lashed out, acting like a dick. And despite my immediate guilt over my actions, I continued to be a dick, not knowing how to stop myself.

I’d ignored the way she’d cowered last night, telling myself it had been for the best. Maybe if she was scared, she would finally protect herself from all the dangers around her. She needed to learn that turning a blind eye to them would get her hurt.

Just like Sofia had been naive about the dangers around her and gotten hurt.