Page 51 of Severed Heart (The Ravenhood Legacy #2)

“So, I’m just going to take him back now,” she adds as if she owes me more of an excuse. “I’m really sorry about that,” she says with a pleading look in her eyes. Perplexed, I give her a slow nod in reply before she turns and flees toward the open door at the back of the gas station.

The fuck?

Utterly puzzled by her fast retreat, I turn to the cashier as he deposits my change in my open palm. “Is that your wife?”

He nods. “Yeah.”

I glance back in the direction she fled. “She looks familiar.”

“You go to First Baptist? She sings in the choir.”

“No ... huh, must be from here.”

“Yeah, she works here most days.” He looks down at the empty silver rungs just next to the register before shouting, “Grace!”

Every hair on my body stands on end, a clear vision filtering in of a bar on one of the worst nights of my life.

“What?” Grace calls from the back.

The night I lost my hero.

“We’re out of plastic bags up front!” he shouts.

The night I lost all sense of security.

“Tim, I’m a little busy back here!”

“I don’t need a bag,” I hear myself say as my veins start to boil.

Swiping my haul from the counter, I barely register Tim’s parting wish for me to have a good night.

Just before I clear the door, I glance back across the top of the aisles to meet the terrified eyes of the woman standing in the doorway of the back room.

Her own eyes already trained on me as she holds her son.

A son with the same color hair and eyes as mine and those of my father.

The guilt and fear marring her expression due to her part in helping destroy my family.

By having an affair with my father and fucking him in my mother’s bed.

My father’s Grace, but the destruction of my own.

* * *

Minutes later, I pull up curbside at Delphine’s to see an unfamiliar truck in the driveway.

Blinking at the sight of it, crimson threatens to steal my vision.

Vision I just spent long minutes clearing in an effort to get back from the state I was in—to get back to her.

Eyeing the storm door, I feel the jealousy snapping me into motion as my heart stutters with the notion of what it could mean.

She wouldn’t.

No, please, no.

Fuck no.

Heart thundering, I barrel out of my truck and make it up the steps just as a man—who looks to be in his late twenties—steps out of the front door.

In an instant, I’m gripping his neck, lifting him to his toes as I size him up.

Within a second, I recognize just how easy it would be to snap his neck and dispose of him.

Easily assessing within the same length of time just how little I would feel if I committed the act.

Loosening my grip slightly as his face starts to redden, he instantly starts stuttering as I scan him from head to foot. “Hey man, I don’t know what—”

Regripping his neck, I plaster him to the side of the house, my hand making it clear I don’t want any excuse from him. Instead, I deliver a threat I have every intention of carrying out if he doesn’t heed the warning.

“Leave without another word, or you’ll cease to fucking exist.” When he opens his mouth, I jerk my chin in final warning, knowing there is murder in my eyes. “Just get in your fucking truck”—I drop my eyes to the name stitched on his shirt—“Eric, and drive away.”

He must see his imminent death in my gaze because he manages to keep from so much as brushing me when I release him before scrambling to his truck.

Gripping the storm door handle as adrenaline does its thing, I do my best to counteract it, even as her warning months ago reaches my ears and snakes its way into my psyche.

“Look at me. I am a villain.”

Just outside the door, I take long, calming breaths to ease my way out of my fury fog.

When I feel I’ve evened out enough, I stalk into the house, the breathing having done absolutely shit to ease the hellfire happening in my chest. Ears perked, I hear the water running.

My heart thunders with my footfalls as I stalk down the hall toward her bedroom.

“I sabotage myself and make many unforgivable mistakes.”

Bursting through the bedroom door, I hear a tell-tale slosh of water, knowing I’ve scared her as I scour her bed.

The sight of it does nothing to ease the burning, forever the same unmade mess it always is.

Inhaling deeply for a few long seconds, when I finally flit my focus to the bathroom, I see Delphine leaning back into her tub, her eyes now closed—a bottle of Smirnoff on the floor next to her.

How long was I breathing?

Taking the few steps over, I glare at her from the doorway as she keeps her eyes closed, purposefully ignoring me.

It’s all I can do to keep from jerking her from the tub as I scour the milky water concealing most of her, the tops of her breasts the only thing protruding above the steaming surface.

Her silky dark hair is already soaked, droplets of water line her lashes as her lush lips slowly start to curve up and into her signature smirk. “Are you going to keep staring or—”

“Did you fuck him?” I can hear the anguish in my voice and decide I don’t give a fuck if my vulnerability is showing. If this was her attempt to thwart us, she delivered exactly where I am my weakest. She knows her opponent and precisely how to destroy me.

Her shoulders go rigid at my question, and very long seconds pass before her metal eyes open. Inside them resides a glare I haven’t been the recipient of in a very long time.

A look that names me her enemy.

“Tyler,” she sighs as if in disappointment, “I told you—”

“Did. You. Fuck. Him?”

She shakes her head, not as an answer, but in annoyance.

“I told you last week, and I’ll tell you now, no man will ever have claim over me again.”

“Alain,” I state her ex’s name, “never owned you. He just manipulated you, and you let him.”

She lifts and uncaps the waiting vodka bottle, taking a long pull as if I didn’t speak a word. “You don’t know what the hell you’re speaking.”

“I think I do.”

“He was a phase,” she sighs, “a very dangerous phase like I am for you.”

“That’s where you don’t know what you’re speaking,” I snap, mocking her.

“You’re right. I’ll never master my English. Maybe I should go back to France. My job is done,” she whispers.

“You actually think you raised him?”

“Ah hello maskless, Tyler.” She smirks. “There you finally are ... but save yourself the trouble and your insults, Soldier. They mean nothing to me.” Even as she expels it, her voice shakes with the delivery.

“I gave you nothing,” she sighs. “Since the very first time I saw that look in your eyes. Where did I go wrong?”

Her words infuriate me. I should have known she saw it. Always saw it. “Because you fucking looked back,” I say, the shake of rage in my voice clear.

“Haven’t you figured it out yet? You’re so intelligent, Soldier, but these feelings are making you less so.

Maybe this is the one thing I have left to teach you.

” Her lifeless eyes roll over to me before she stares at the opposite side of the tub.

“Love is not kind , is never worth it, and is not worth waiting for.”

I’m already at her side as she finishes.

“Yeah, let’s drink to that.” I snatch her bottle, taking a few long pulls until I know I’m going to feel it.

Now perched on the side of the tub so I’m sitting adjacent to her, I allow myself to feast, the water becoming clearer by the second.

In size, she’s tiny. Toned legs, luscious, curvy hips, perfectly full breasts, and mouthwatering dark rose-colored nipples.

The sight of her naked in my state is blisteringly painful.

It’s my first real eyeful of the body beneath, and despite the fact I want to drown her, I want to drown in her far more.

“Thinking about putting my head underwater?” she prods as I set her bottle out of reach.

“That was one brutal move, General, but this isn’t a fucking game for me, so make up your mind,” I snap.

“Am I still worthy of the love you seek from me?”

“I don’t have to search for the truth when it comes to you. That’s your confusion, not mine. I know who you are beneath your little veil of bullshit.” I run my palm along the top of the water and cut my eyes at her. “Answer me.”

She remains mute, staring back at me without expression, her eyes void of all warmth.

“Jesus.” I shake my head. “You really do play your part so fucking well.”

“I don’t act,” she snaps. “Not for you, not for anyone.”

“Maybe not. Your self-destruction and sabotage is far too fucking messy to be rehearsed. Did. You. Fuck. Him?”

“Go home, Tyler. I should never have entertained this.”

“ I am fucking home and just in time to clean up another mess,” I hiss.

Leaning in, I slowly grip her neck, sliding my thumb to her pulse point as it pounds at a steady rate—not the accelerated beat of someone who just actively had sex and is coming down from any type of high.

Even so, her expression remains calm and defiant as her void, lying eyes roll over me.

“My mess, Tyler, not yours.”

“We’ll see about that.”

She grips my hand and squeezes it, cutting off her own breath. “You don’t have it inside you.”

I cut off her air altogether. “You’re sadly mistaken, but I would never fucking hurt you.

You know that. You fucking know that. Physically or otherwise.

Not in the ways you’ve been hurt. Not in the same ways he hurt you.

But unlike that piece of shit you married, I will fight for you, Delphine.

I’ll fight you with everything I have to make you mine and to keep you mine.

To keep you smiling and happy. To keep your beautiful face free of fear.

To keep you protected and feeling safe for as long as there is breath in me. ”

She stares off with me, unflinching as I relax my grip enough for her to breathe and she laughs in my face. “Isn’t it past your bed—”