Page 49 of Broken by my Bully (Lessons in Cruelty Dark Academia #1)

My hand flies over my mouth, then slides up to my eyes. “Shit, sorry.”

Bastian grabs my thigh through the sheets bundled at my waist. “Haven, it’s okay. I told you I was a therapist. I’ve seen it all. I know you’re not angry at me. You’re just?—“

I keep my hands over my eyes because it makes it easier. “I am angry at you,” I whisper. “I don’t know how to make this any clearer, Professor. I don’t want to talk about my past, and I certainly don’t want you psychoanalyzing me every five seconds, either. So stop pushing. Stop prying .”

The weight of his hand disappears.

I make the mistake of looking, thinking he’s walked away. But he’s standing right in front of me, and I get an eyeful of the bulge behind his towel.

It’s not just large. It’s obscene. It’s like he’s hiding a weapon under there.

My hand flies to my mouth. “Jesus Christ, I didn’t mean to?—“

“Yes, you did.” He shifts, and the towel slips lower on his hips, exposing more of the dark hair between his legs. “Just like you meant to wear only my t-shirt to bed. Just like you kept flashing your ass at me on the couch last night.”

My face burns. “I did not?—”

“You did. Right after you asked if I was offering to fuck you properly.” His voice drops. “Offer still stands, by the way.”

I force myself to look away. There’s a vague memory of me saying that, but I don’t remember shit about flashing him. Just that I backtracked super fast and told him I was kidding.

He didn’t seem amused then.

He definitely doesn’t seem amused now.

“You’ve been very…hospitable…but I have to go,” I force through trembling lips.

The silence crystalizes around us until he scoffs quietly.

Definitely not amused.

“You have to go?” His voice is dangerously soft. “And where exactly are you going, Haven? Back to your car? Back to vacant parking lots and gas station bathrooms?”

“That’s none of your?—“

“Everything about you is my business now.” He steps closer, and I have to crane my neck to maintain eye contact. “You made it my business when you showed up at my door in the rain. When you let me feed you. Clothe you. When you asked if I wanted to fuck you.”

“I was drunk?—”

“ In vino veritas .” His thumb brushes my bottom lip. “Wine reveals truth, girl. And your truth is that you want me to ruin you.”

I jerk my head away. “You’re wrong. ”

“Am I?” He grabs my chin, forces me to look at him. “Then why can I smell how wet you are from here?”

I glare at him, silent, refusing to let his crass words drag me under. We stay like that for a long moment before he snatches his hand away and drops his gaze.

Did I just…win?

“Can you drive stick?” he mutters, adjusting his towel.

It’s his fault I’m so confused, throwing innuendos around like that.

“What?”

“Manual transmission,” he says through a sigh. “Can you handle it? Or do you need someone to teach you?”

“How long does a hangover last?” I ask, staring at the Land Rover. “Because I’m really struggling with the math here.”

Bastian slams the trunk closed and turns to frown at me.

“What’s the issue, Haven?” He holds out a pair of keys. “Get in and follow me back to college.” His brow furrows. “You’re not night-blind, are you?”

I scoff. “What? No.” I reluctantly take the keys when he jingles them at me. “But I can’t do this.”

“Which part? Drive? Follow me? Get in the car?” He’s losing his patience, though I’m surprised he has any left at this stage. First, he has to put up with me in his space all day, and now I’m balking at what seems to be an incredibly generous offer for me to use his spare car.

“I can’t accept this. It’s too much.” I try to give him back his keys, but he ignores my hand.

“And I can’t stand the thought of you spending another minute driving that deathtrap around, so I suppose we’re at an impasse. ”

“Deathtrap?” I shake my head. “Your house is a deathtrap.”

There’s such a sudden, ferocious light in his eyes that my stomach clenches up. “What?”

“A bird hit your window. It’s dead now.”

At least, I think it is. Its body is gone. Maybe it survived and flew away. Or maybe it was never there to begin with.

Bastian looks away, sighing. “Yeah. Shit. The angle of the light is just right sometimes. The tint’s supposed to prevent it, but I guess they can’t always tell what’s real and what’s just a reflection.”

Thank God. I don’t need to add hallucinations to my growing list of mental disorders.

“Please.” I hold out the keys again, hoping this time he’ll take them. “I know it looks like shit, but my car is fine. I don’t need you to give me a car.”

“I’m not giving you the Landie,” Bastian says, frowning again. “It’s a loan until the end of the semester.” He glances back, waves an irritable hand toward the garage. “Saves me having to keep it on a trickle charge to stop the battery going flat.”

“If you don’t use it, then why do you still have it?”

I don’t expect him to answer me. I’m just stalling so I can try to think of another excuse not to accept this car. Because he can paint it however he wants, but it’s another gift. And while the concealer and ointment were practical, and the chocolates were yummy…this?

This feels like entrapment.

Like I’ll owe him…owe him big.

And everyone I’ve ever known has always collected their debts.

“In case there’s a terror attack,” he mutters, as though he doesn’t actually want me to hear his answer.

A laugh bursts out of me so fast, I clap a hand over my mouth in embarrassment.

He narrows his eyes at me. “An EMP can disable anything with a circuit board. That includes my Tesla. If there’s a strike, I want to get the hell out of the state.” He slaps the Land Rover’s boxy frame. “Post apocalypse? It’ll be this guy, the cockroaches, and Keith Richards. ”

“Who’s Keith Richards?”

“Jesus Christ.” He stares at me like I’ve lost my mind, and then goes to his Tesla, shaking his head the whole way. He pauses by his door to point a finger at me. “Stop reminding me how old I am!”

I point one right back at him. “Gotta keep you humble, Sir!”

He faces away, laughing as he climbs into his car.

I bounce the keys on my palm, then stare over at him as he reverses. When he sees me just standing there, he rolls down his window and sticks his head out of the car.

It’s a surreal moment. Another one of those snapshots, right on the cusp of something new.

Good? Bad? I don’t know yet.

He changed into a black t-shirt and dark-wash jeans. I guess he was going for casual, but now the contrast between his pale skin and dark hair is that much starker.

That much sexier .

He doesn’t seem to feel the chill in the early evening air. The clouds will start building up again soon. And then comes the rain. Days and days without end, until the Agony River floods and washes away all the bullshit that’s collected over the past year.

I used to wish it would wash me away, too.

Shouldn’t even have been out of the house by myself at that age, definitely not that close to a speeding river, but even my young, tender mind had accepted the fact that no one gave a shit about me.

I’d throw sticks into the river and watch them being swept away, giggling when they disappeared under the frothy waves.

Even put my foot in a few times, amazed at how hard the water tugged at my leg. A swell. One misplaced step. That’s all it would have taken. And little Haven Lee would have washed up on the shore a few days later, grey-skinned and blue-lipped, a broken doll no one had wanted to play with anymore.

But then I met Kai.

I never went back to those white-flecked waters.

He made me feel special. He made me feel wanted. Even though it sometimes hurt when he played with me.

Feeling something was better than feeling nothing.

And now here I am again, standing at the edge of another dangerous current. Only this time, the river has dark eyes and calls me ‘sweet girl.’

This time, I might not want to be saved.

“Are you coming?”

I kick a stone lying on the ground near my foot. “Could’ve let me drive the Tesla.”

He chuckles, but there’s something predatory in it. “We’re definitely not there yet, sweet girl.” His eyes rake over me. “You haven’t earned it.”

“How do I earn it?”

His smile turns wolfish. “I’m still deciding. Now get in the truck.”

I slide into the driver’s seat, adjusting mirrors that haven’t been touched in God knows how long. He leads me down the winding road to his house, and I catch him watching me in the rearview mirror more than once.

Not my face, but my hands on his steering wheel. Like he’s imagining them wrapped around something else.

I white-knuckle the wheel and follow him into the gathering dark, knowing I’m driving toward something I can’t come back from.

Knowing I don’t want to come back from it.