Chapter Twelve

Lore

Fuck him.

I mean, I wasn’t someone who thought things like that, but, well, fuck him.

It had been six days since I’d even seen him.

Six.

The first day, I’d kind of still been riding the high of successfully implanting myself in his life with his friends and, well, the sex on the chair, too. Even if my cheeks went hot each time I thought of how bold I’d been, how I’d shamelessly begged for him to be inside of me.

The second day, I felt a familiar ache starting that I tried to bury under hot baths and binge reading.

By the third and fourth and fifth, though, that ache had become a gaping hole. A desperation that disgusted me, but one I couldn’t seem to shake either.

But when I woke up on the sixth morning of not seeing his face, hearing his voice, even knowing he was alive save for the drying towel in the bathroom and a still warm pot of coffee downstairs, well, the sadness started to morph into anger.

Which, honestly, was better than all the trying and often failing not to cry I’d been doing.

But he’s hard, Cinna’s words came back to me on an unwanted loop. And when hard things crash into soft ones, the soft ones get crushed.

The anger made me feel a lot less soft, less crushable.

Even if I knew from a very young age that anger was just a mask that other, more tender, feelings hid beneath.

All the hard hides hurt, I remembered Nico saying of our cousin, Brio, a man whose name was spoken in whispers because he was so well known for his demonic sort of violence.

The anger got me out of the bed I’d been moping in.

It got me showered and dressed.

It got me in my shoes and jacket and out of the front door.

I walked down the street where everything reminded me of Renzo as I tried like hell to forget about him.

So I got my coffee.

I browsed the bookstore. But I couldn’t seem to decide on anything. All these books about these princes and vampires and fae and alphas and their undying love for their heroines.

It just wasn’t as appealing as it used to be.

And I was pissed at him all the more for ruining my books for me too.

Maybe I would pick up thrillers. Or horror. Full of bad people with bad intentions and often bad endings.

That sure felt a lot more realistic these days than sweet declarations and everlasting love.

I walked out of my favorite bookstore in the world with empty hands and that familiar spiderweb of cracks in my heart starting to spread.

Not wanting to go home, but also having no idea what else to do with myself, I just walked, pretending to window shop, but mostly just getting lost in my hurricane thoughts, whipping and twisting and blanketing everything in cold and wet misery.

It wasn’t long before the anger was, once again, the grief it had always been.

I blamed that for what happened.

Blamed the way my eyes were all glistening with tears once again for the reason I couldn’t see it until it was too late.

See him until it was too late.

Until I was walking down a side street significantly less crowded than the one I’d turned off of at some point.

Until a hand was grabbing my wrist, yanking it hard enough for pain to pop in my shoulder, making a small cry escape me as I furiously tried to blink past the tears to see what was going on.

“Give me your purse,” he demanded, my body suddenly flying backward, cracking against an unforgiving wall.

“I… I…” I tried to say, but found it impossible to speak past the fist of panic in my throat.

I didn’t have a purse.

That was what I wanted to say to him.

My brothers had always tried to beg me not to walk around the city with one, saying it was like a target on my back, and how there was no reason to carry one if I just tucked my cash or a small card wallet into my front pocket, where no one would be able to snatch it.

And I wasn’t in the habit of carrying a lot of stuff with me most of the time. So I’d always just done what they’d told me to.

What was left of the cash I’d brought with me to Renzo’s house was in the front pocket of the jeans I was wearing.

“Give me your fucking purse,” the man growled as slivery chains of anxiety tightened around my belly, chest, and throat at the wild, savage look in his eyes.

His hand released my arm, and my feet moved instinctively, trying to get away, go back toward people, toward the safety they provided.

“Bitch,” he snarled, and I thought, hoped, he might have been discouraged, would just walk on.

Until I felt hands slamming into my back, shoving me forward.

My belly plummeted as I threw out my hands, feeling the sidewalk burn across my palms as my weight came down on them.

This couldn’t be happening.

In broad daylight.

Just a few blocks from home.

Uselessly, another thought formed.

This wouldn’t happen in my old neighborhood.

Not because crime didn’t happen there. It did. More often than anyone wanted to admit.

But because there was a certain level of protection my family provided. Because people knew of them and my connection to them.

Not here.

Where I’d never been seen with Renzo, save for at our private wedding and at a party in our own apartment with only his close friends in attendance.

My jacket tightened around my chest, making the whole breathing thing even more of a wish and prayer than actuality as I was whipped over onto my back.

“No no no no no,” I cried as his hand grabbed for the zipper of my jacket, yanking it down.

Looking, likely, for a purse hidden under it. Out of reach.

“No!” I yelled, finding a louder voice, trying to project it, to bring attention to what was happening.

“Shut the fuck up! Shut up!” he growled as I opened my mouth to scream.

I didn’t get a chance to.

Not as he cocked back and swung.

The punch landed to the side of my lips, the pain ricocheting up until it overtook the entire side of my face as I tasted blood.

“Where’s your fucking money?” he growled as I whimpered, reaching up to cover my face. “Shut up!” he snarled again, his hand pressing down over my mouth as his other one roamed over me, fingers brushing over my chest, down my side, lower.

I was fighting then, scratching and kicking, trying to wiggle away, fear of something much worse than a robbery bubbling up in my system.

It was then his hand ran over the bulge in my front pocket.

His fingers fished in, grabbing the wad of cash, the last bit I had in the world, grabbing it in his greedy fingers, releasing me, and turning to run.

Alone, I sat back up, my face screaming, still tasting blood as I got up on shaky feet.

A tremble had started over my whole body as I looked around, hoping for someone to ask for help.

Before, suddenly, I was cupping my throbbing face, turning, and running back where I’d come from, passing curious faces.

But this was the city.

People minded their own business.

It wasn’t until I was emerging from the elevator, tears streaming down my face, blood trickling from the split in my lip, that someone gave a single damn about what might have happened to me.

“What the fuck—“ Elian snapped, jumping to his feet.

But I didn’t want to talk.

Not even to him, the only person in this life of mine who seemed to care about me at all.

I wanted to get inside.

“Open it,” I cried, hating the pathetic sound of my voice.

“Okay. Alright. Okay,” Elian said, voice echoing the helplessness I knew he must be feeling as he punched in the code.

I didn’t wait for him to push it open, grabbing the handle with my road rash palm, and throwing it open before running into the apartment, up the stairs, and into the bedroom.

Where I could break down in private.

My shaky legs took me into the bathroom, where I caught sight of myself in the mirror, the tear-stained cheeks, the split lip still trickling down my chin and off onto my shirt, a bruise forming up my cheek.

I needed to clean my face. My hands.

But all I could seem to do was walk back into the bedroom and collapse onto the edge of the bed, cradling my face, rocking. Too numb even to cry as the adrenaline started to drain, leaving me feeling racy and unfocused.

I don’t know how long I sat like that, lost in the nothingness of disassociation.

But I heard the door below me swing open.

And some part of me wanted to yell down to Elian to just leave me alone. That his kindness and care only reminded me just how much I wanted that from Renzo. And how I was never going to get it.

I didn’t quite register that there was no way that Elian would swing the door open so hard that it cracked against the wall.

Or that he would be running through the apartment. Footsteps heavy and quick.

It wasn’t until I heard my name, a raised, almost panicked plea for a response in the voice I liked so much that I realized it wasn’t Elian at all.

“Lore!” Renzo’s voice filled the apartment, making that stupid, traitorous heart of mine flutter. “Lore!” he called again, voice getting closer as I heard the thunder of his footfalls on the stairs.

Then, suddenly, the bedroom door was flying open.

And there he was.

The very man who was to blame for all my despondency since I’d moved into this new neighborhood, this new home.

And, yet, somehow, the only person I wanted to see.

I watched as his gaze fell on me, taking in the blood on my shirt, on my chin, my mouth, and the bruise sneaking up my cheek, likely getting darker with each passing minute.

It was fury first. A bright, blazing anger that burned in his eyes, that tightened his handsome features, that had a muscle ticking hard in his jaw. Even his hands weren’t immune from it, curling into tightened fists, wanting to crash into something, someone.

But, slowly, I watched as he worked to tamp down the rage, fight it back because it was useless in this situation.

Then, my heart aching at the sight, I saw the concern etch his handsome features, softening his eyes, making his head cock to the side, his hands unfurling.

“Oh, mouse,” he said, his voice a soft caress as he moved closer, dropping down to his knees in front of me.

I hated myself for it, for being so weak, for having such shaky walls when it came to him, but all was suddenly forgiven in that moment as his hand reached upward, touching my cheek with a gentleness that a man who was all hard wouldn’t be able to pull off.

Cinna was wrong.

He wasn’t just hard.

It was that he saved whatever soft he had for me.