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She acts like she hasn’t been doing the same thing to me since the day she stopped answering my calls.
A flicker of a thought races through my mind, a voice whispering at the back of my head that I can’t hear clearly. Still, it’s there, but I’m too angry right now to take a second and listen to what it says.
“If you walk away from this, I’ll be the one to tell him.”
“Why?”
The skin between her eyes crinkles, the color from earlier absent from her face.
“Why would you do that to him?”
Interesting.
“Do what to him?”
She shakes her head without answering and sighs.
“Whatever. I give up. Five more weeks of pure hell. Are you planning on hurting me every day from now on the same way you’ve been hurting me this past week? Just let me know so I can prepare myself for the torture.”
Hurting her.
She says that like she hasn’t been hurting me this entire time.
Stepping close to her, I dip my head in the way I know drives her crazy. It always makes her eyes widen when we’re this close, her lips slightly parting as her pulses races that much faster.
“Have I hurt you?”
Emily’s eyes water, both sorrow and rage contained in her salty tears. Only one escapes to slip slowly down her cheek.
“Yes. Every day. Just by existing in this fucked up arrangement and refusing to walk away. You know exactly what you do to me.”
I grin at that, my eyes tracking that tear until I lift my hand to catch it on my finger.
“You’ll have to forgive me then. It couldn’t be helped.”
Her eyes lock to mine, her lashes waterlogged.
“You can’t help hurting me?”
My grin widens.
“It just happens, especially when you’re so pretty when you cry.”
I flick the tear back at her and step away.
Emily fractures as my words hang between us.
I watch the pieces fall apart.
Watch her heart shatter.
Watch pain ebb and flow so violently in her eyes.
But then she does the one thing she’s always done.
She picks up all those broken pieces and stitches them back together, her eyes locking to mine with defiance and rage blazing behind them.
It makes me grin to see it.