Fine.
Fine!
“You’re a coward, Sullivan Sinclair. A goddamn coward.”
He stilled.
A subtle shift of sizzling tyranny settled into blistering self-control. His hands stopped massacring the boxes. His shoulders turned stiff, his very breath slowed from harsh to hardly at all.
Terrifyingly slowly, he turned to me. His eyebrows raised mockingly while his blue gaze remained on lockdown from feeling. “Interesting choice of words, Jinx.”
“What? Coward?” I narrowed my eyes. “No, actually, I think it’s the perfect one.”
“A dangerous slur to slander.”
“Truth is never dangerous.”
He smiled with daggers of frost. “Truth is the most dangerous thing of all.”
“Is that why you run from it?”
“It’s why I deal in lies.” He rolled his shoulders, doing his best to stay in control of the volcano I poked. “I created this island and filled it with hypocrisy and fraudulence. I embraced the fact that all life is a lie. All feeling is fiction. All trust ends up being deceit.”
“Trust is hardwired into us. It’s a fundamental law for co-existence.”
“And yet, I’ve survived just fine without it.”
“Trust me, you’re not fine.” I pressed a fist between my breasts, imploring him. “Survival is not happiness, Sully. Survival is a damn imposter for living. Truly living. To laugh. To be free. Can you not remember how good it feels to relax? To have faith. To trust.”
He laughed with a scary chill. “You ask me to do something I’ve proven is the one thing I am incapable of doing.”
“You’ve just trusted the wrong people.”
He swooped toward me, snatching my jaw with no sympathy. “I trusted those I called family.”
I flinched against his aggression. “Family doesn’t automatically earn a free pass.”
His eyes darkened until I stared into a black hole. “Family are supposed to be the one network that’s got your back.”
“Family we’re born into can make mistakes.” I struggled to speak with his tight grip on my jaw, but I wriggled until I had enough freedom to mutter, “Family we choose to share our life with can make mistakes. But the family you choose with your heart, your soul, that’s worth trusting. Trust is ninety-nine percent of what makes being in love so magical. To know you’ll be cared for in sickness and in health. To know they accept you…regardless of your flaws and—”
“Trust is the one reason I will never be in love.” His gaze flickered to my lips before narrowing back on mine.
“You’re already in love, Sullivan Sinclair. You’re just too chicken to admit it.”
His eyes snapped closed.
His fingers dug into my cheeks until I tasted blood. “I suggest you stop antagonising me before I do something we’ll both regret.”
“You’re already doing something you’ll regret.” I poked his unrelenting temper with a stupid twig of truth. I knew Sully had the potential of exploding. Of cracking the very earth I stood on, of suffocating me in smoke, of burying me in lava.
But it didn’t stop me.
It only made me wilder, stupider, reckless and careless and desperate.
Desperate to stop him from being such a stubborn asshole.
My temper had always gotten me into trouble. I’d kept it silent in Mexico. I’d done my best to keep it tethered around this man with unfortunate results.
But here?
Now?
I couldn’t contain the tempest inside me. I was the sea whipped by the wind. I was the sky pierced by lightning.
This could get me killed.
Or…it could save us from a mistake that would ruin both of us for life. Because if he did this—if he gave me to another man after our hearts had tangled into this messy, tricky chaos, then he would lose me.
As surely as I’d lost him.
Men in love don’t share.
Men like Sully, who wore possession like expensive diamond cufflinks, did not rent out the woman they’d chosen.
If he could do this.
If he could give me to another.
Then…what I felt for him was a lie.
And what he made me think he felt in return was the worst kind of forgery.
This whole damn island was full of deceit and distortion and the very myths he traded in.
And I was done trying to yank at the curtain, doing my best to get it to tumble down, frantic with the need to shatter the illusion Sully had trapped himself in.
The illusion that trust would hurt him. Trust would bruise and kick and punch him. Trust would kill his animals, his sanctuary, his heart.
My voice lost its heat, mimicking the ice he cast himself in. I arched my chin in his hold. I locked eyes with the one man I was made for, and hissed, “You make me serve a real guest, Sully, and whatever this is between us, is dead. No resuscitation. No reincarnation. I will never speak to you again. I will never look at you again. I will treat you as you’ve treated me. With disdain and impatience. I will turn my back on you when you summon me to serve. I will spit in your face if you touch me. I would rather sink to the bottom of the ocean than ever let you fuck me again.”