“I’m sorry,” Simone says to me. “I didn’t mean—”
“I know,” I growl, and she quivers again.
Ella looks like she’s ready to throttle me.
“Slade, you can’t—”
I turn and walk off, needing immediate distance before I rip Simone’s head from her shoulders and punt it like a bloody ball of some sort. One of the round ones, not the oval kind.
Scrubbing a hand through my hair, I stop once I’m just at the edge of the woods and exhale harshly.
Then I wait on the daft girl to catch up so she can be the one to apologize to me.
Chapter 25
ELLA
“I can’t believe he just stormed off like a five-year-old,” I say quietly to myself, eyebrows up as I resist the urge to laugh, mostly because Simone, poor girl, is still shivering to death.
I say poor girl because my instincts want her as dead as Slade seems to, and she has no clue, because I’m perfectly aware of how wrong that is. I’m not that kind of monster.
Just knowing she’s had sex with him now seems like a much bigger offense than it did before I slept with Slade. It’s like those twenty-four hours just sadly became the best in my existence, and now she’s threatening that by even breathing.
“He’s right,” she says as she stands. “I shouldn’t have even approached you.”
“You’re trying to make amends,” I say dismissively. “It’s not like I was going to let you off without bloodying you up a little,” I add in confession.
Her lips curve in a smile on one side of her mouth, but I only notice from my peripheral because I’m staring at Slade as he stares out the woods. Just standing there with his hands on his hips, not moving or making a sound.
“But he’s right,” she says again. “I disobeyed him, and I knew when I joined him that he’d bring me revenge, but that I’d have to obey his rules because they were law.”
“Arrogant ass,” I mutter under my breath, wondering if he hears it, since he turns his head to the side just a little to let me see his jaw tic.
“I really was jealous,” she goes on, her voice quieter.
I turn and arch an eyebrow at her.
“You left me to die because you envied me? That was a terrible time to envy me, if we’re being honest with each other,” I decide to point out.
Her sad smile looks so weighted as she shrugs. “You’re beautiful even by immortal standards,” she says, and I stand a little taller while my expression grows incredulous.
Her hand comes up,
eyes on my hair down by my shoulder. “And I hated you because of how perfect you are,” she goes on, withdrawing her hand before she touches my hair.
Her eyes come back up to meet mine. “I had sex with him because pleasure in that hell came in only one form, and he never hurt me or demanded it. It has admittedly taken me a while to realize things are different out here, and I can want more things. They put us together for their viewing pleasure, and for the sake of trying to procreate, so they rarely let us be with other women.”
I’m really confused for another second or two before my eyebrows lift in confusion.
“I was given leniency because he knows how broken my animal is on the inside because of what was taken from me for so long. Slade very likely knows exactly how big of a line I crossed, and I’m lucky not to be dead. We all know you’re his, even though he’d never admit it. I had no right to want you, and I hated you, because I saw the way you only looked at him. You even thought it was because I was hung up on Slade. It’s him I was jealous of, because it was clear you wanted him as much as he wanted you. It was petty, and I should have been killed, and I’ve regretted so much since my broken animal instincts calmed down.”
She says all this as though it’s no big deal that she had a fatal-attraction crush on me, and since I didn’t reciprocate, she left me to die. Then she lowers her eyes before walking away.
“Maybe that will change one day,” she adds from beside me, and I stare straight ahead.
Well, then. I so did not see that coming.
“Hashtag, stalker alert,” Dice says from out of nowhere, startling the hell out of me. “Karma used to have a thing for the crazy ones. I wonder if she and Simone ever—”