Page 138 of The Cruelest Chaos

“I don’t fucking care,” he snaps, his eyes darting to mine for a second. “I won’t let them hurt you. They won’t fucking touch you. If you want to leave me, be my fucking guest. No harm will come to you. I’ll throw money at you, Ella. You can go where you want. Live where you want.Be who you want.”

I turn to stare out the window again, my heart aching.

“You think someone like Con could you make you happy?” There’s a bitterness to his words, but it seems the question is genuine. “You think a nice boy will be what gets you off? Keeps you satisfied for the rest of your life, Ella? You think that’s what you want? Or do you just want to try everything?” He snorts. “I can understand that, baby, so don’t lie to me. What do you think it would take, to keep you happy?”

“I’m nineteen.” I don’t even know why I say it, like it’s a defense or something. Iamnineteen, but…love doesn’t really have an age. I know that. My mom is thirty-five and she doesn’t know a damn thing about love. Lucifer is in his twenties, Sid, too, and they’re dying over one another.

I’ve wanted to drown in Maverick for so long, but I thought it was all part of what was wrong with me. Why I’d been sent to The Ark in the first place. Why I saw a therapist and she told me I needed to morph that obsession I’d had with Shane to myself.

I’d needed to love myself.

It scares me, thinking I might love Maverick more.

He doesn’t say anything, but then he pulls off the side of the barren road, fields on either side of us and stops the car.

I turn to stare at him, my mouth open, but nothing comes out.

He gets out, comes around to my side, yanks the door open, reaches around me and undoes my seatbelt. He pulls me out, slams my door, and shoves me against the car, his hand flat on my chest.

“What do you want, Ella?” He leans down close, his eyes lit with anger. Frustration. Maybe something like sadness. “Tell me what the fuck you want. Because I won’t do it. I won’t do what he’s doing.” He flings his hand out behind him, to the wind, as if Lucifer is right there in that field. “So tell me fucking now. If you don’t want this—”

“You’ll what?” I challenge him, my eyes hard as I lean up toward him, my hands balled into fists. “You’ll take me right back to where I belong, in that trailer? You’ll call up that girl you fucked in front of me—”

He puts his hand over my mouth, leans in close. “Don’t be fucking stupid, Ella. I love you, for fuck’s sake.”

My eyes widen, my pulse pounding beneath his hand.

“I fucking love you and I didn’t see you coming. I never saw this coming, okay? But I love you and your fucking red hair and your freckles and how you could eat everything in my goddamn house and still want more. I love how you beg me, how you want me to hurt you, how you kiss me. How you’ve defended me more than anyone else has in my life.”

I realize I’m not breathing, and I don’t want him to stop talking. My heart swells with his words. Words I’ve never heard from anyone in my life. Words I never thought I deserved.

“I love you, goddammit, and I need you to tell me now if you’ve changed your mind. If you don’t feel the same way.”

Slowly, he trails his hand down my mouth, over my throat, one hand still against my chest.

I swallow back the tears. “I love you, too,” I gasp. I grip his shirt, and his eyes soften, relief flooding his features. “I don’t understand everything. What you do. What your brothers do. I don’t get it. But I don’t care. I never have.” I yank him closer and my lips brush his. “I’m not going anywhere.”

He smiles and it’s so fucking beautiful I want to cry all over again.

“I’m not going anywhere, Mavy, as long as you keep feeding me.”

He tips his head back and bursts into laughter and my heart feels like it might burst with him on the side of this stupid, lonely road.

I uncurl my hand, letting go of his shirt, and he grabs my wrist, lifting up my palm. Watching me, he runs his tongue diagonally down my skin, heat in his gaze.

It burns, his mouth on the cut.

It burns, but I’d let him cut me open and tear me apart over and over again. And I did, just the other night. I paid him back, too, in his own blood, on his hand.

Coagula.

To bind.

We’ve been bound since he first left a mark on me, the very first night I met him.

“I love you,” he says again, his lips brushing my palm. “We aren’t them,” he reminds me, seeing something in my gaze. “We’re us.”

I nod.Us.I’m not sureusis any better thanthem, but what is there to do about that?