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Her brows furrow, her hand trembling as it cups my cheek. “I hate this.” She sighs, the sound raw and heavy with emotion. “It feels like you’ve forgotten everything.”

Everything. The way we fit. The way we burned for each other. The way it was perfect before the truth ripped us apart.

She has no idea how wrong she is.

My hand wraps around her throat, tilting her chin up, forcing her to look at me. “I didn’t forget a damn thing.” My lips brush against hers. “You don’t understand what you represent, Dinara. You’re everything that’s wrong, and I can’t look past it.”

Her grip tightens on my bicep, every part of her breaking. “Then leave me alone. Turn around and never look back.”

“If only it was that simple.” I lean in, my lips grazing her ear. “I lost myself the moment I first saw you, and there’s no antidote for that.”

Her breath shudders, a frustrated, helpless sound.

“That’s not my problem,” she groans as I press against her. Her nails rake up my back, and I crave for them to dig in deeper, to mark me with a brand only she can leave. “You can’t keep chasing me away from every guy I talk to.”

She has no idea just how deep my sabotage runs.

“Watch me.” My fingers trail up her inner thigh—slow, deliberate, testing the boundaries of her resistance.

She should push me away. I need her to. But we both know she won’t. A quivering sigh slips past her lips as I brush aside the last barrier between us, my fingers finding her warm, slick, and aching.

“Oh God,” she breathes, sounding like something between surrender and despair. “This isn’t fair.”

Nothing about this is fair. Not this moment. Not the past. Not the way my body still begs for her like an addiction I’ll never break.

I roll her clit between my fingers, and she trembles. Every muscle in my body tightens, wanting her to lose herself in this, to give in, to remind me she still feels this torment too.

“I’m a bastard,” I murmur against her throat, feeling the frantic pulse beneath her skin. “But you like it, don’t you?” My thrusts deepen, my thumb working her into desperation, forcing her to feel what she does to me. “You like knowing I can’t forget you. That I still need you.”

A sharp inhale quakes through her, but then her eyes flash with rage, and before I can stop her, she grabs my wrist and yanks me away.

“How does that help me?” Her voice breaks, raw with anger, with grief. “The best thing you can do is forget me.”

I know that. God, I fucking know that.

She shoves at my chest, shaking her head like she hates what we are, what we’ve become. “You’rethe one who ended this, remember?”

The words land like a punch to the ribs. The knot in my throat tightens, but I force myself to let her go.

“For good fucking reason.”

“Then stop this madness!” She throws her hands in the air. “Stop it once and for all.”

I want to. Fuck, I want to. But I don’t know how.

Her bitter laugh slashes through me, but it’s the pain in her eyes that guts me. I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. There’s nothing I can say that won’t make this worse.

“God damn it!” I grip the back of my head, trying to shake off the chaos inside me.

She’s not yours. You did this.

“I’m leaving now,” she says, smoothing down her dress with shaking hands, each motion so heartbreakingly final. “Don’t follow me.”

Everything in me screams to stop her. To pull her back. But I just stand there as she turns to go.

Then she peers over her shoulder. Just once. And it’s that look—that quiet, devastating look—that destroys me.

Before I can think, I’m on her, crushing the space between us, my fingers tilting her chin up as I kiss her. Desperate. Unforgiving. A war between everything I can’t have and everything I still need.