Chapter 2

Something is reallywrong with me.

What just happened between Roman and me was twisted, and toxic. But I’ve never come so hard in my entire life, and that’s confusing the hell out of me right now.

Roman is on top of my chest, his cock still buried inside me. After both our orgasms faded, he just kind of collapsed on top of me, and that’s where he”s been for several minutes. It’s actually kind of nice, the two of us connected, just soaking each other in, but his weight on my chest is making it hard to breathe.

“I can’t breathe,” I choke out, trying to wedge my arms between our bodies. “You’re too heavy.”

He rises up onto his arms, mercifully lifting the bulk of his weight off my chest. I pull in a lungful of air. “Ugh, that’s better,” I cough.

He rolls off me, finally separating us, but his gaze is strange, like he’s studying me, or seeing me for the first time, or something.

“What?” He looks so serious, and it’s kinda freaking me out. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

He reaches over and brushes a strand of sweat-drenched hair off my cheek. “Do you remember what you promised?”

I look away, swallowing at the reminder. I hadn’t wanted to swear to anything, because who knows where this will ultimately lead. Roman is dangerous, and a part of me knows it’s only a matter of time before this thing between us explodes. Our relationship has been drenched in gasoline since the beginning. One spark and it all goes up in flames.

But when the words finally left my mouth, it felt good to say it, to give myself to him like that. Maybe it’s because I’ve never really belonged to anyone. Or maybe it was just the heat of passion that made it feel so magical. Either way, I know, over time, that feeling will fade for both of us. And that’s what I’m bracing myself for, the realization that this was all just a hormone-induced fantasy.

I glance back at him and shrug one shoulder. “I remember.”

With a deep growl, he wraps me up in his arms and pulls me against him. After a few minutes of silence, I broach the subject that’s been weighing on me for days.

“What happened with Tyler?” I ask.

A couple of days ago, I saw a notice go out from the University to all of the students, notifying everyone about his death. No details were given, but contact information for a suicide hotline was included at the end of the message.

Releasing me, he rolls over onto his back with a sigh. “The rumor is that he threw himself off a cliff, into the ocean.” He shrugs. “It’s a shame, but you never really know what people are dealing with privately.”

I prop myself up onto one arm, resting my head in the palm of my hand. I probably look casual on the outside, but my insides are a riot of anxiety. If I could ignore this whole thing with Tyler, I would. The last thing I want to do is confront the fact that the guy I’m fucking actually killed someone. But I have to. Something like that is too big to ignore.

“Tell me what happened,” I say evenly, despite the fear buzzing in my veins. Images of him beating the shit out of Tyler will forever be branded in my mind, and I don’t know, I guess I just want him to give me a reason to excuse it.

He turns his head to look at me, his eyes searching my face, like he’s trying to decide how to make his case. “It had to be done, Lux.”

“No, it didn’t,” I say, my gaze never leaving his. “Let’s at least be honest about that.”

“He wanted to hurt you,” he says evenly like that’s justification enough for murdering someone.

My gaze flicks over his face. He’s so fucking beautiful that sometimes, it’s uncomfortable to look at him. It’s still hard to believe someone like him is into someone like me. Not that I’m unattractive, per se, but definitely not his caliber.

“I saw what you did to him,” I say, remembering the pool of blood that was gathered on the basement floor. “You tortured him.”

He pushes out a breath and stares up at the ceiling. “He was working with someone. I had to find out who that was.”

“And did you?”

His jaw works as he continues staring up at the ceiling. “We will.”

I nod, and fall back onto the feather pillows, staring up at the same ceiling. “You enjoyed it…” I whisper.

From the corner of my eye, I can see him turn his head abruptly to look at me. “Why would you say that?”

I turn my head to look at him. “Because I saw it in your eyes.”

In that flutter of a moment between him looking at me when I walked in and right before he realized it was me, I saw it; that glint of joy in his eyes. Blood dripped from his fists, and he looked relaxed, and comfortable, like he enjoyed the violence.

He just stares at me, like he doesn’t know what to say. But he doesn’t deny it, and that’s more telling than anything he could have said.

After a couple of long minutes, he finally speaks. “Tell me about your mother.”

It’s such an abrupt change in topic, I blink. “Wow, way to avoid a topic.”

With a shrug, his lip curls up into a half-smile, like he’s not even trying to deny it. “I want to know everything about you.”

“Wow, everything?” I laugh. Fine, I’ll bite, but only because I don’t want to talk about what I saw in that basement. I still shudder at the memory. “My mom…yeah, I’m not sure what to say about her. She’s a narcissist, and she really only thinks about herself.”

Roman rolls over onto his side, tucking the pillow more firmly under his head. “What was your childhood like?”

“Ah, it was mostly just me and my mom. I didn’t have many friends, until middle school, when I met Bree.” I smile a little. “It was us against the world. And her house was a refuge for me.”

“Until your mom left…” he supplies.

“Yeah, she joined this spiritual healing group that turned out to be a cult. I was in sixth grade, my grandma came to pick me up, and she said my mom was gone.” I shrug, remembering that moment. “I was confused. I didn’t know what she meant. And then she explained that my mom had moved to Florida with this healing group.”

When I got older, I looked the group up, and it’s clearly a cult. The members all sit around worshiping one woman they call Priestess, giving her their money while they all eat mung beans and sing kumbaya. It’s disgusting.

“Did she ever visit you after that, or call you.”

“Nope,” I say, tears stinging the backs of my eyes. God, it’s been so long since I’ve thought about any of this. I haven’t even delved into it with Dr. Cunningham. There really hasn’t been time. We’ve been mainly focused on helping me through the aftermath of the attack. “I reached out to her once, in high school. I found her information on the cult’s website” I shrug. “She never responded.”

A tear escapes and rolls down my cheek. Roman reaches over and pulls me against his chest, enveloping me in his warmth. Then he buries his face in my hair and inhales deeply. “Fuck our parents,” he says.

I laugh, wiping the tears away. Honestly, my mom doesn’t deserve any emotion from me at all. “I have my grandma, though. She’s been great.”

He rolls back onto his back and sighs. “Yeah, sometimes, all you need is that one person. My brother was that person for me, growing up.”

“You still have him, though, right? I mean, after he serves his time and all that.”

“Yeah,” he says. “That’s true.”

I groan and bury my face in Roman’s warm chest. He’s still a bit sweaty, but I don’t mind. “I really don’t want to talk about sad things.”

I just found out my best friend is dead—just thinking those words is so surreal, almost like they can’t possibly be real–so the absolute last thing I want to think about is my attacker. Fuck him.

Roman pulls back a little and lifts my chin so I’m looking at him. “I’m just trying to understand, Lux. You’ve been through a lot, and you’re about to face a lot more. I need to know how to help you.”

“Don’t worry about it. I have a really good therapist.”

The same therapist I’ve been ghosting for the last three days. My grandmother must have called him with the news about Bree, and he’s been texting nonstop, trying to set up a session. But a session means reliving every sordid detail of what happened with Bree, and I just don’t feel ready for all that yet.

“Lux…”

Ugh.I push out a harsh breath and roll onto my back. “Fine. I know you won’t let up until I give you my whole life story, so…what do you want to know?”

Roman reaches out and with the tip of his finger, he traces patterns on my stomach gently, almost reverently. “The guy who attacked you, was he someone you dated? How did you meet this guy?”

I close my eyes and draw a strengthening breath into my lungs. I’ve already been through a lot of therapy surrounding my attacker, so it’s not as painful to explore him, as a person. The event that led to his arrest is still quite painful, though, oddly. I guess I still haven’t quite worked through that.

“Last summer, I was at the mall with Bree and a couple of other friends, and he just kinda….walked up to me, and introduced himself.”

Roman lifts himself up onto one arm, head in his hand, completely engaged. “Wow, bold move.”

I shrug. “No bolder than picking me out of a crowd and insisting I’m now your consort.”

“But that’s a long-standing tradition, to be fair. I didn’t invent that.”

“Okay, fine. I’ll give you that. Anyway….he seemed nice, and he was cute, so I gave him my number. He called me almost immediately, which probably should have been my first red flag, but…I don’t know, at first, I thought his eagerness was cute.”

I still remember him walking up to me in the mall. He was holding a stack of papers, so initially, I thought he was trying to sell me something. It wasn’t until he started talking that I realized he was hitting on me.

“So what happened?”

I turn my head to look at Roman. His beautiful face is drawn and serious like he’s focusing on my every word. “Before I continue, promise me one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“Promise me you’re not going to track him down and kill him or something.”

That earns me a smile. “You think I would do that?”

I just stare at him, because he has to know what I’m thinking.

“I promise I won’t kill anyone.” He clears his throat. “Again.”

“Well, he’s in jail anyway, but who knows how far your family’s reach extends.” I sigh. “Anyway, he called me and we started seeing each other, going out on dates. He’s a couple of years older than me, and it’s clear he had money, so we went to some pretty fancy places. But, I don’t know, it got really serious, really fast. He started telling me he loved me, like, two days in.”

Roman’s fingertip traces a new pattern around my breast, then my nipple. “Some people know right away who their person is,” he says, his gaze focused on his own fingers.

“Yeah, that’s not what this was. There was a desperation about him that made me uncomfortable. He would call me all the time, even really late at night, and just… wanted to be on the phone with me while he watched TV or whatever. It was weird.” I shrug. “But I figured it was just the intensity of a new relationship, so I brushed it off for a while.”

I swallow back the emotion that rises to the surface. “After a couple of months, it was clear he wasn’t going to relax. In fact, he only got more emphatic about how much he loved me, and if we weren’t together, he wanted to be on the phone with me, making sure I wasn’t talking to any other guys. So I broke up with him, and that’s when shit got really crazy. He’d just show up at my apartment, or places I’d be. He texted my friends, he even put a tracker on my car. It was insane.”

Swallowing past the bile in my throat, I continue, “I went to the police, obviously, but they couldn’t or wouldn’t do anything, not until he made a threat, or harmed me, which is so fucking stupid. So I did the only thing I could do, I texted him and told him to leave me alone, threatened him with all kinds of things, anything that would scare him and get him to go away. But that only managed to anger him–and that’s when it happened. That’s when he came to my apartment and…well, you know the rest.”

There’s a long stretch of silence, until finally, Roman asks, “Did you let him fuck you?”

The way he phrases that is strange, and his tone is angry, which has me wondering what’s going through his head. Does he think this was all my fault? Like I led this guy on or something?

“Yeah,” I say, opting not to elaborate.

Roman sits up abruptly and moves to the edge of the bed. I sit up, too, folding my legs in front of me. He dips his head, and all I can see is his tanned, muscled back. “You promised you wouldn’t get angry,” I say, my fingers itching to reach out to soothe him.

“I promised I wouldn’t kill him, not that I wouldn’t be angry.”

“Okay, well, it was long before I met you, so…”

“It’s unsettling,” he says, not even attempting to elaborate.

Uh. “What’s unsettling?”

He turns his head to look at me, his gaze catching mine. “I guess I just identify with him a little too much.”

That makes me pause. I mean…I hadn’t really thought about it, but yeah, they both have an intensity that can be overwhelming. But it’s different with Roman. I feel the same intensity he feels for me—as much as I’d love to deny it.

“It’s different with you,” I say. I don’t know if I should comfort him, but I feel compelled to for some reason.

He turns his whole body to face me, his pale gaze searching my face. “Would you put me in jail?”

Um, what a question. How do I even answer that? “I haven’t so far.”

“That’s not an answer.” He reaches out and brushes a thumb across my chin. “Tell me honestly, Lux. Would you have me thrown in jail for loving you?”

I swallow. “It was a sick kind of love. Toxic, unhealthy.”

His gaze is still searching my face, but he’s calm like we’re talking about the weather. “Isn’t that what this is?” he asks. “Toxic?”

I don’t say anything, because I honestly don’t know how to answer that. Of course, it’s been toxic between us, but it’s also beautiful, and addicting.

“Why him, and not me?”

I reach for the only answer I have. “If you tried to hurt me, then I’d have no choice.”

“I hurt you all the time,” he says faintly, watching his own thumb stroke my bottom lip. “And you just keep coming back for more.”

Anger hits me hard in the chest. But not anger at Roman, anger at myself. Because, I know, deep down, it’s true…