And he meant it too. At least, I think he did. He looked awfully sorry, pitiable and sad.
“And I don’t forgive you.”
Surprise flashed his guilty expression, thick brows sinking together. “Then why did you insinuate you wanted an apology?”
“Because it was the right fucking thing to do,” I spat. “But just because you say sorry doesn’t mean that I have to accept it. Forgiveness isn’t a transaction, James.”
His focus dropped to my mouth as I spoke his name, throwing it in his face.
Yes, I remembered his name. Yes, I remembered what he did for me on the plane, and how he took care of me. Touched me, comforted me. Though, it didn’t really matter that he put me back together when he was the one who smashed me to pieces in the first place.
“Fine.” He appeared to cave, shaking his head, having another rough go at his hair with an aggressive swipe of his hand. I didn’t want him to give in though. I wanted to fight.
I wanted yelling and shouting and punching and bleeding and the room padded wall to wall in radiant fury.
Beside me were two disgustingly decorative pillows, and I snatched them both. The first launched through the air with a grunt and hit Reyes square in his pretty face. Shock unzipped his mouth down to an open frown, and he looked my way just in time for the second pillow to smack his chest.
His arm slapped over the pillow, catching it against his body. “Scarlett, stop.”
In response, I chucked my flip flops at his head.
He knocked them away using the pillow he’d caught, brimming outrage rising to high-tide in his sunset eyes.
“I understand you’re mad, but that doesn’t mean you need to act like an irate five-year-old.”
“Oh, that’s rich. Please continue to diminish my feelings and label them as childish.”
I threw another pillow his way. He dodged it, his twinning rage ebbing out of him to come and play. Good.
“You’re literally trying to start a fucking pillow fight. That’s the definition of childish behavior.”
“Oh. So no to the pillows then?”
Reyes' face perked in alert as I rolled over to the nightstand, yanked open the bottom drawer, and pulled out the book of fairytale lies that every hotel had.
“Scarlett, don’t,” Agent Reyes warned, hands splayed out in front of him on guard.
Blowing a strand of beet-red hair from my eyes, I popped a shoulder. “You’re the one who said no pillows.”
And then I hurled the thing at his head as hard as I could. He swatted it out of the way with the pillow, the Bible crashing into the window and flurrying the blinds into a fit. I snapped my head from side to side, my list of objects to throw growing slim.
My hands lashed out and wrapped around the alarm clock sitting on the nightstand, the digital red numbers flickering as I wrenched the thing out of the power socket. Just as I felt the cord slack free, another pair of hands snatched it away.
“You’re done, Scarlett. Fucking stop it.”
Agent Reyes held the alarm clock with its dangling cord an arms length away from me, and a wonderful idea formed in a question of if I could make him angry enough to strangle me with that cord. I could certainly try.
“No.”
I wouldn’t stop. I wouldn’t behave, because I couldn’t rein it in enough to even try. The blinding hurt was too much, a cocktail of agony and guilt cooked to enliven my body to such a physical state that all I knew was the fire racing beneath my skin.
Reminding. Burning. Punishing.
I pushed at him, hands flattening against his solid chest in hopes of watching him fall to the ground. He didn’t, but rather righted himself with one half-step, patience dwindling to a blurry dot in his pupils.
So I stood to my full height on the bed, looming over him, and pushed with all my might again.
Push him far. Push him over. Push him until he snaps.