I smile brighter. “Liar. You care about me.”
He frowns and shakes his head. “I don’t.”
“You can’t lie anymore. I know the truth.”
“How?”
I grin around a bite of pizza as he stares deeply into my eyes. I can feel my cheeks blushing like a schoolgirl who just found out her crush likes her.
“You called out your safe word.”
He frowns. “And that means I care about you?”
I nod. “You would have only said your safe word to get them to stop hurting me.”
“Explain.”
I laugh. “My challenge was to last until someone said their safe word to try and get it to stop. You were that person. You stopped my suffering Langston, which means you must have been suffering a lot watching me.”
It was the same rules last time, but last time I was here, there was no one here that personally knew me. It took much longer for someone to say their safe word to try and stop my pain
.
“Does that mean I’m out of the game?” Langston asks.
“No, you didn’t say it as part of your challenge. You’re still in. But if you want out, just say it at the beginning of the next round.”
He nods.
I go back to happily scarfing down my pizza.
“I care.”
His words make my heart skip a beat.
“I care about you. But I still hate you,” he says.
I bite my bottom lip to hide my pleasure at hearing those words.
“Same,” I say.
His eyes light up at my voice.
We both finish eating all the food on the tray.
“Get in the tub. You must be aching,” Langston says.
I nod.
He turns the hot water on to warm up the tub and then holds out his hand to me. I take it, and he pulls me up into a standing position.
I let my towel fall to the floor, but this time, Langston doesn’t take in my body.
“It’s okay, you can look at me,” I say.
He shakes his head. “If I do, I won’t be able to stop. I’ll run my eyes over every inch of your body, looking for all the ways you were hurt. And you don’t need to be violated again, even by me.”
What happened in there broke him more than it broke me. Maybe because I’m already in a million pieces.