Page 145 of Cruel Pleasures

Hurst’s jaw clenches. “You’ll have to. There’s no other way.”

“Then I’m out. Right now.”

She manages to skirt past both of us before we can stop her. While I’m more concentrated on watching her form disappear down the hall, Hurst pivots toward me. He jams a finger in my chest, his lip curled in an aggressive snarl.

“Outside,” he repeats.

“Move.”

I’m the second to leave the room. Not to head outside to fight Hurst but to track Imani upstairs.

She’s already throwing clothes into her suitcases by the time I ease her cracked door further open. If she notices I’ve stepped into her room, she doesn’t acknowledge me. She marches from the dresser with an armful of bras and panties and dumps them unfolded inside the suitcase.

Seconds pass where this is all that happens.

I give her the moment to stew and stomp around. Be as angry as she wants to be. Then I attempt to bring reason back to the situation.

“Imani,” I say. “You have every right to pack.”

“Your opinion doesn’t matter. I’m doing it anyway.”

“Obviously. But perhaps if you stopped long enough to take a breath, you’d remember letting your temper get the better of you rarely works in your favor.”

“Then what am I supposed to do, huh, Ryu? Stand by and let you and Archer beat the crap out of each other? Go all deranged and kill each other? Over what? Me?”

“We are equally as determined to have you,” I say. “You will have to choose. The sooner you accept?—”

“I don’t accept it! I didn’t ask for any of this. I… I just wanted my best friend back. I didn’t want to come here and deal with some crazy murderous bitch in a mask who had some plot to use me as live bait. I didn’t plan on literally being hunted down for sport. I didn’t need two men stalking me for weeks, invading my privacy, playing mind games, getting me to… to feel things I never should!” she shouts in a flare of emotion. “So now that the freak show is all over and you two confirmed you view me as an object, I’m going home. Where I can be on my own in peace. Away from all the confusion and insanity.”

“Do you think that will work?”

“I just told you I’m leaving?—”

I move toward her bed and grab her hand to keep her from zipping up the rest of her suitcase. “Do you really think you will be rid of us that easily? Do you truly believe that men like Hurst and I will simply… let you go? That we won’t be lurking?”

She blinks many times, her eyes misty as they meet mine. “Stay away from me.”

“No,” I answer. At the flicker of outrage on her face, I slide two of my fingers under her chin and press my lips to hers. The kiss is quick and fleeting but enough to communicate the truth she knows deep down. “You may go. You may return to your old life and try to pretend this never happened. But we will always be around. We will be watching. We will be waiting. We will always come for you. I will always come for you.”

The second kiss I give her lingers on. The misty tears have begun to roll down her cheeks as our lips touch and I thumb them away. Eventually, when it seems she can’t bear any more affection, she turns her head away from me. Her breath comes out in a shaky exhale as she slips away and returns to the safety that’s packing her suitcase.

“I have to get out of here,” she says simply. “It’s too much, Ryu. I can’t.”

Seeing some of her in the person I’ve been for years—the closed off shell that wasn’t ready to face certain truths—I know we’re at a dead end. There’s no point in reasoning with her. For the time being, she’s retreating.

Regressing as some form of protection.

But it’s still not the end.

As I back away and she jams a pair of shoes into the suitcase, we both know it.

It’s far from over. Even if she’d like nothing more than for it to be.

37. Imani

Cry Kill Die - Lana Del Rey

Two months later…