Page 95 of Unconditionally Yours

“You offering one?” I ask, walking up on him, looking for someone to break.

He squares up. Big guy. Tattooed knuckles. Doesn’t matter. I want pain. Want to earn the bruise under my eye, the cracked knuckle, the breath knocked from my lungs. Want someone else to bleed so I don’t.

I let the first punch come. Roll with it. Taste blood.

The next part’s a blur of fists and shouting and something crashing behind me. I get him on the ground. That’s when the bouncer yanks me off, and fucking Rhys is there.

Calm. Crisp. Untouched by chaos.

“Let go of him. He’s mine,” Rhys says to the bouncer, flashing some badge or therapist voodoo. I don’t know. I’m busy spitting blood onto the floor and trying not to cry.

Not from pain. Not from the punch.

From the fact that she picked me. Not perfect Rhys. Not safe Benji. Me. And I wrecked it the second I tried to hold on.

“Let’s go,” Rhys says, not asking. He puts a hand on my shoulder and steers me out like a violent animal that only listens to one voice.

I don’t fight him.

Because I’m tired. Because there’s nothing left to say. Because I fucked the one thing that felt like hope and I don’t know how to fix it without losing what’s left of myself.

Chapter Thirty

Rhys

Jett follows me to the 24 hour pancake joint.

I order us both a coffee and a plate of pancakes.

He asks for peanut butter. So do I. Why not. There are worse ways to self-medicate.

His face is purpling. Tomorrow, he might regret starting a bar fight. Probably not. Men like Jett, men like me, we don’t flinch from pain. We drink it. We bleed just to make the silence stop echoing.

Men like Jett. The ones she fucks in motel rooms with broken locks and sheets that smell like smoke. The ones she thinks I belong with. It’s not who I am anymore.

Or is it?

Jett and me. The not-Benji’s. Though he’s ahead. One and a half points, if we’re keeping score: fingers, then cock. Meanwhile, I’ve got a stack of ethics and a goddamn clipboard.

That’s not why I’m here. This is about Jett. My client who needs me. And now I’m balancing between duty and pure, acidic resentment. He touched what I keep locked behind every fucking rule I wrote for myself. And she let him.

“Do you want to tell me what happened with Chad?” I ask.

He stares at me, long enough for the waitress to bring our food.

“You know Benji? She mention him?” Jett’s voice flattens. “She talk about me too?” He’s bracing to be gutted and trying not to show it.

“What she tells me stays in the room,” I say, voice clinical, hollow. Like I didn’t jerk off thinking about her mouth. “Chad?”

“My lawyer will handle that. Fucker came to my work mouthing off in my face. It was provocation,” Jett says.

“Did you do more than hit him?” I ask.

“Only took one hit to knock him out,” Jett says and smears his fork in the peanut butter before spearing a bit of pancake.

They’re alike in all the ways that matter. Fire feeding fire. And Benji she adores with a softness I’ve never earned. I’m just the one watching the whole fucking thing and pretending it doesn’t rip me in half.

Resentment’s a razor under my tongue. I swallow it down with coffee.