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“Dinara. I’m sorry. I just?—”

“You just what?” I laugh, but there’s no humor in it, only sharp edges and exhaustion. “Want to have your cake and eat it too? This isn't fair. To either of us.”

Agony flashes across his face before it turns into something darker. “What’s fair has never been part of the equation, leannan. If it was, you’d be mine.”

Every piece of my soul tears wide open.

“I could be.” My fingers slip into his, trembling, desperate. “But you won’t let me.”

His breath is shallow, uneven, every exhale burning against my skin.

“This has been the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” he whispers in a raw and broken way. “Walking away from you. Pretending I don’t want you every second of the damn day. I swear, Dinara, I feel like I’m bleeding out.”

He presses a kiss to my forehead for just a moment—just long enough for me to feel the wreckage in him, the same one tearing through me. When he pulls away, the loss is immediate, like something inside me has been ripped out.

I turn my back to him, inhaling shakily and fighting to stay upright, to keep the flood of emotions inside where they belong. I refuse to fall apart in front of him.

But when I finally gather the courage to look at him again, he’s gone. Like he was never there at all.

That’s when the tears come. I rush into the bathroom, staring at the broken girl in the mirror, the one I no longer even recognize.

No more. I can’t go on like this. He doesn’t get to control me. Doesn’t get to own my emotions anymore.

Except…my heart.

That’s been his since the moment he came into my life.

Grabbing a napkin, I clean up the last of the pain, and a few minutes later, I return to the table, finding the guy I’d been forced to talk to gone.

“There you are. Are you okay?” Concern threads through Natalia’s features.

“Fine. Where’d what’s-his-name go?”

His friends laugh, and one of them responds, “Someone slashed his car tires. He went to call his dad.”

A faint smile tugs at the corner of my mouth.

Cillian.

CHAPTER25

CILLIAN

THREE MONTHS LATER

Every timeher friends try to set her up with someone new, I’m there. Lurking in the shadows. Ruining any chance she has to move on.

I know it's messed up. Twisted, even. But then again, I never claimed to be sane.

She’s mine. Every inch of her. Every breath. Every thought. It’s all mine. Even when I can’t have her. Even when I shouldn’t.

It’s a kind of hunger that gnaws at me relentlessly. A desperation so deep, I can taste it on the back of my tongue. And if that makes me a bastard, so be it.

The days blur together. I go through the motions, but every moment is consumed by thoughts of her. Every woman I pass, every voice I hear, every whisper of a scent in the air…it’s all her.

She’s everywhere, yet she’s nowhere.

Not with me.