“You accuse me of betrayal? God, I don’t even recognize you sometimes,” Amara whispered, the rage in her voice boiling over, her tone a whole world different from how it had been an hour ago speaking of this very man. “Yes, I told an innocent woman who had no part in any of what happened to him about why her life was at stake. I told the truth about him to a woman who makes him so alive, I’ve never seen him like this before. If by betraying you and him, he gets a chance at a better life than he’s had, then I’d betray you a hundred more times! She deserved to know and he deserves a chance!”
“Do not start with this again,” Dante whipped out. “It’s a fucking simple thing. We trusted you and you broke it. It was his story to tell and he would’ve told her if he wanted. He didn’t.”
“Because he’s scared it’ll change things!” Amara cried out, her soft voice straining. “And things need to be changed, don’t you get that?!”
“Not like this.”
There was silence for a second before Amara asked quietly. “Are you mad because I betrayed him or because I betrayed you?”
Atta girl.
Morana cheered silently on the woman who’d become her friend, who had knocked a yelling man down a peg with her soft, scarred voice. Something akin to pride filled her.
Before another word could be uttered in the apartment, the hulking man beside her - who’d stilled more and more with every word - stepped out of the elevator and turned right, striding towards the dining area where the voices were coming from. Morana followed quickly, a few steps behind him, biting her lips to keep her thoughts to herself.
She stopped at the edge of the living room, seeing both Dante and Amara frozen to their spots, inches away from each other but both looking at Tristan Caine with wide eyes. Dante’s gaze flickered to her for a moment, taking her in from head to toe, his observant eyes lingering on her lips for a long second that suddenly made her realize how swollen they were. Morana didn’t avert her eyes from his dark ones in his troubled handsome face. He shook his head once before moving away sharply towards the window and glaring out at the view.
Amara didn’t look at her at all, not for a moment. But stared right back at the man beside her, her spine straight and chin up, no remorse on her face for what she’d done. Morana felt her respect for the woman go up a notch - because being on the receiving end of Tristan Caine’s eyes drilling holes into you was intimidating as fuck.
She looked up at him to find him staring back at Amara, his jaw clenched.
Nobody uttered a word.
The tension between the two seemed to climb higher and higher, so much so that Morana debated interfering for a moment. But then she saw his lips move.
“Go home, Amara.”
His voice - that voice of whiskey and sin - spoke for the first time in hours, softly to the beautiful woman, a demand and a request rolled into one.
Amara nodded without any argument or explanations, picking up her bag from the counter and walked past them towards the elevator. She came to a halt beside the console and turned to look at Dante as he looked out the windows, her dark green eyes angry.
“Stop being a coward, Dante,” she spit out softly in his direction. “It’s high fucking time.”
Uh oh.
With that, she walked into the elevator and closed the doors behind her.
Okay.
But it wasn’t over, it seemed. Morana watched with her eyebrows up in her hairline as Dante fisted his hands beside him, before picking up a vase from the nearest cabinet and throwing it on the floor, smashing it to glimmering pieces. Flinching from the suddenness of the noise, the beautiful crystal shattering loudly, and the broken bits splattering all over the floor, Morana inhaled sharply.
She was too tired, too overwhelmed, to witness anything more emotional in any kind, not until morning. In a way, she was actually grateful to Tristan Caine for keeping his silence and not being the forceful whirlwind he could be sometimes. For now, she needed to unwind lest she resembled that vase on the floor - shattered from a force it could not withstand.
So, knowing it would be better for her to retreat and to leave the men to their mutual brooding and privacy, to go tend to her wound, she stepped back.
Retreating towards the guest room on silent steps, she opened the door and slipped inside, aware of the pin-drop silence in the apartment, the only noise coming from the torrent clashing with the glass windows. Letting out the breath she’d been holding since getting on the elevator, Morana quickly put her phone on charge, headed to the bathroom, and went about turning the warm water on in the bath.
Taking a seat on the ledge beside the sunken tub, she went about cleaning her wound again, hissing as the sting made her already sensitive eyes water, and closed it with butterfly bandages. Then, stripping her clothes, she threw them in the corner, knowing she would never wear them again. The water tested, the door shut, she dipped a toe in the large bathtub and finally sank.
It was like a full-body hug from the best warm water she’d ever dipped in.
The best hug.
Groaning at the amazing way the water caressed her sore m
uscles and kissed her little cuts, she dunked her head once before tipping it back against the tiles behind her, keeping her arms on the ledge beside her, her eyes closed.
She didn’t let herself think of anything - not her car, not her cold-blooded murders, not her father, not his attempt to kill her, not the man who’d come for her, not the choice they’d both made, and definitely not the kiss that still stung her heavy lips. She didn’t let herself relive it - not the rain, not the gun, not the man. She didn’t let herself remember it - not the soft caresses, not the hard hunger, not the silent choice.