Because I still didn’t fucking understand.
I boiled it down to the barest, most basic thing.
“He took what was mine, so I took it back.”
Dejection shook her head. “So that’s how it is to you, too? I’m just a possession? A plaything? A commodity to be bought and stolen? Used how you want? What, are you going to force me?”
Her voice was hard, but a single tear slipped down her cheek.
A shock of rage spiraled down my spine at the thought of someone hurting her. It lined my insides in steel. This feeling like I wanted to gather her up. Protect and hold her. Ease whatever horrible shit had been introduced into her life.
But she was the one who’d chosen it, wasn’t she?
She didn’t fucking wait. Didn’t fight. Destroyed the hope we’d been given.
I had to hold every demand back, thewhythat screamed from my brain. My hands cinched tight on the steering wheel to stop myself from doing something stupid like reaching out, touching her, and begging her to stay.
It really fucking sucked loving someone you were supposed to hate.
I forced myself to stare out the windshield when I let the bitterness override. “Who said I wanted to fuck you, Aster?”
The words were daggers.
Lies.
Bred of the years that pledged that neither of us knew the other anymore.
Hurt tangled her fingers together like doing it could keep her from coming apart, the words thin wisps of pain. “Then why are you doing this?”
Nonchalance filtered out with my shrug. “Some people need to be taught a lesson.”
Distaste and disbelief filled her scoff. “So that’s why you lured Jarek here…for you to teach him that? A lesson? Do you realize how dangerous that is?”
The headlights ate up the pavement, the forest whipping by in a blur as I flew down the winding road.
“I was as surprised to see him as he was to see me,” I told her, eyeing her for a clue.
Her expression twisted, more of that confusion. Gut told me she didn’t know how Jarek had ended up sitting there any better than I did.
She fidgeted, shifting in hesitation and dread, before the haggard question tremored from her tongue. “Is he dead? I heard a gunshot.”
“Do you want him to be?” It was bait.
Aster flinched before she turned to stare out the passenger window at the slur of snow-laden trees. Her voice was quiet with strain. “He’s my husband. What do you think?”
“Don’t worry, Aster. Yourprinceis just fine.” My teeth gritted as I spat it, and I floored the accelerator, flying down the winding road.
As if there was any fucking way to leave that fact behind.
* * *
I whipped my car into the rounded drive of the hotel on the outskirts of the small city. Severity bound the cab of my car, that energy thick. Every mile that passed had been painful.
Aster sat up higher in her seat. Uncertainty had her gaze darting to every corner. Her nerves scattered like the wind that gusted through the valleys of the mountain.
“What are we doing here?” she wheezed.
I smirked over at her, though it was bitterness that leaked out with the words. “What, did you think that I was taking you to my place? I’ll pass, but thanks.”