He gripped my cheeks, pulling me close until I could taste the honesty on his lips. “And I will always make sure you’re safe first.”
Tears pricked my lids. “So…what does this mean? We’re on opposite sides again?”
I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t fight with him again.
He drew me closer, our foreheads pressed. “It means we love each other madly. It means we’re soulmates. It means we’re always on the same side, even when we’re not.”
“You said you could let me be Atlas,” I whispered.
I felt his brow furrow against mine. “I don’t know how to do that, Snitch.”
Sadness settled as dew on my heart. The seconds stretched into infinity as we stared into each other. I forgot where we were, the day, the time.
I think Grayson got lost too, because when the moment shattered, I saw it clearly in his eyes.
“This is really touching.” West’s bored voice drifted from behind us. “But the fireworks are over, so unless you want everyone to know what the fuck we’ve been up to, maybe put a cliffhanger on the melodrama.”
Grayson’s grip slipped from my cheeks to hold my biceps, his gentle touch now a vice. “Don’t fucking do it.”
“What choice do I have?” I begged. “I’m his mistress. And we are…” Smoke. In my lungs. Burning my throat. “We are nothing. So.” I swallowed.
The anguish in his eyes seeped like acid into me. “You’re my w—” he caught himself.
Because even now, we couldn’t say it.
Not in front of West.
And that’s why I had to do this; we’d been stuck in this black bubble, never moving forward, too afraid to do the necessary things to pop it, too afraid to be covered in the sludge.
I didn’t want to sleep in West’s bed.
I didn’t want to be anywhere near him.
“If you try to send me away, I won’t go. I’ll stay with him. I’ll fight for this even if you won’t.”
“You don’t think I’m fucking fighting, Snitch?” he snarled.
The same circle.
The same nightmare.
Over and over again.
Maybe we really were like mother, like daughter, but my brand of heroin tasted like whiskey and lollipops.
I shoved Grayson with both hands, stumbling free—but the cruel part was that I know he’d let me go. This decision rests on my shoulders.
West held out his hand, waiting for me. His smile was so wide, I swore the fucking moon caught the white canines. “My bed has been really fucking empty without you.”
Just as my hand enclosed in West’s, Grayson fisted the shirt he’d given me, pulling me to him by the bloody fabric at my chest. West still held my wrist, keeping me tethered to him.
“What are you doing?”
Grayson growled against my lips, so West could clearly hear. “Giving my wife her New Year’s kiss.”
He crushed his lips against mine, mean and vicious, bleeding his anger into his kiss. He curled the fabric of my dress until I heard another tear, until I had to arch into his kiss. Into this pain. My shoulder screamed as West tugged me back.
Held between the two of them as they fought bloody for scraps of my body.