“Because you knew that I’d die if I woke up and saw you.”
It hurts something deep in my chest to know I’m right, to see him just standing there, not denying it. He knows he’s so toxic that it would kill me to be with him. He didn’t just save me by pulling me out of that car. He saved me by giving me to someone who could take care of me, knowing he couldn’t. He gave up control.
I know how hard that is for Royal. I know that must have been a sacrifice even bigger than bringing me revenge. That time, he set it all up before he gave over control. He didn’t set things up when he followed me. He truly believes I belong to him, and it would have been his right to take me home. But he knew that I wouldn’t survive it, so he ceded control—not just to anyone, but to his worst enemy.
And he didn’t even take credit. He didn’t do it to get a thank you. He did it to protect me, honestly and truly, without even needing me to know.
I want to cry, but I’m too furious. I’m furious that I still understand him so well, that I ache for the sacrifice he made, that I see how selfless it was and I can’t go back in time five minutes and erase that knowledge from my head and make it simple to hate him again. Why couldn’t it have been Preston who pulled me out, like I thought?
I want to hate Royal. I do hate him. I hate him for not letting me hate him completely. I can’t bear another minute of the fucking turmoil rolling through me. Something inside my head cracks. I don’t see red. I see white. All the confusion and overwhelm of the day, the guilt and fury and pain and fear, erupts.
“And you expect me to thank you?” I ask incredulously, prowling toward Royal. “You think I owe you because you saved my life once after you tried to take it? Because you saved my life when you’re the reasonItried to take it?”
“No,” he says, a frown creasing his brow. “You don’t owe me anything, Harper.”
“You’re damn right I don’t,” I snap. “Because if you think for one minute that buying groceries is going to make this okay, you’re even more psychotic than I thought. You have no right to pretend you care, Royal. No right to say that shit about taking care of me now or tell me you pulled me out of that car. You didn’t take care of me, Royal. You didn’t protect me. You ordered my execution, and you have no right to even speak to me again, let alone say the things you said to me this morning. You have no right to make me feel anything for you ever again.”
I stop, my breathing ragged, and gulp in air. My eyes are burning, my hands shaking, and my chest aches with a clenching tension. My temple throbs, like my anger is driving a bolt slowly through my skull.
Royal glares back at me, his eyes an icy, inky black. “That implies you ever felt something to begin with.”
I just stare at him, trying to get my breath, but he’s taking all the air in the room for his huge, oversized body and huge, oversized presence. “I did,” I say. “I fucking loved you, Royal. Is that what you want to hear? You want me to lay my heart out for you to decimate that, too? I told you, I won’t fight. I already laid it out, and you smashed every bit of it under your bootheel until there’s nothing left to feel anymore. You may not believe me, because you don’t think anyone could love you, but you’re wrong. Someone could have. Someone did.”
“Bullshit.” His word is quiet, his eyes intense and so fucking full I want to drown in them, just give myself to that darkness inside him and let it devour me until I disappear forever and I don’t have to hurt anymore.
“You have no right,” I grit out again. “You don’t get to tell me what I felt wasn’t real. You’ve taken every single part of me and destroyed it. I can’t feel anything anymore. You don’t get to erase what I felt before you, too.”
“You were faking it the whole time,” Royal says, his voice hollow, hopeless.
“You don’t fucking know how I felt,” I snap. “You may not think you’re worthy of love, and maybe you’re not, but that doesn’t mean someone can’t love you anyway. That doesn’t mean I couldn’t choose to love you despite it, whether you deserved it or not. That was my choice, and I paid for it. But I don’t love you anymore, Royal. You’re not worthy of even my shitty trailer park love anymore. That wasyourchoice. You have no right to keep coming around here, stalking me like it’s some cute game between us. It’s not a game, Royal. I fucking hate you. I hate your face, I hate your stupid couch, I hate that I can’t go to Preston’s without putting him in danger. I hate that you’re in my house, so I can’t even maintain the illusion of safety in the shithole I call home.”
I’m crying now, and Royal steps forward like he might hold me again, like he still has that right. I dead-arm him with my brass knuckles when he tries to touch me, though. I’m so fucking beyond done with this shit. I don’t want to have to feel something new every time he comes around, to be reminded of what he did and how thoroughly it annihilated my soul.
“I’m trying,” he says quietly. “I’m trying to make it right.”
“You can’t fucking make it right,” I explode. I don’t care if I’m an ugly mess. I want him to see all the ugly inside me, all the ugly he created. I want him to quake before the power of my hatred, but he never will, and it infuriates me beyond all rational thought. “You have no right to even try. You have no idea what you’re asking. You think I can fucking forgive you? You have no idea what I’ve been through. You have no idea what it’s like to be tied up, completely helpless, while someone takes every part of you until there’s nothing left, not even your soul.”
“You’re wrong.”
I’m crying so hard I don’t know how I’m still speaking, but I can’t stop. “You have no idea what it’s like to have no choice in how your body responds, and to have it mocked and used against you. You don’t know the shame of hearing them fucking reveling in it. You have no idea what it’s like to be completely vulnerable and have someone command your deepest fears be realized while they turn the other cheek when you beg for mercy.”
“You’re wrong,” he says again, his voice quiet and emotionless.
“You have no idea what it’s like to be left in the dark, never knowing when they’ll come back. You don’t know what it’s like to have people touch you without your permission, to not even know who’s been inside you and done the most intimate act possible to you, how many of them, who they are, who has violated you in a way that you will never come back from, even if you find out it was just three of them instead of ten. It doesn’t fucking matter, Royal. Don’t you get that? It’s too late. Knowing the truth doesn’t change what I experienced that night.”
“I know.”
“You do?” I demand. And then I see the look in his eyes, and all the fight drains from me. They’re so dark and full of a hurt so deep it aches in my bones, my core, my soul. And I know we’re not just talking about him knowing that the trauma doesn’t change because I found out it was just the twins and Dawson.
“You do,” I whisper, swallowing down the rawness of tears in my throat.
He doesn’t say anything. I take a step forward and wrap my arms around him, squeezing him hard. He should be the one falling apart after a confession like that, but I’m the one who does. The anger that kept me going has deserted me, and I just hold onto him and sob because everything else is gone. After a minute, his arms slowly rise and wrap around me. He scoops me up, cradling my body as he sinks onto the couch. Then he just holds me while I soak his shirt, unable to stop the shuddering sobs that wrack my body. I don’t think about how right it feels to be engulfed in his arms, to have his body wrapped around mine, cradling me to his chest like a baby. I just cry like one, until there’s nothing left inside me.
When the last tears are spent, I pull back and wipe my face, letting myself slide off his lap even though the false sense of protection he provides feels so real when I’m in it. At last, I look up at Royal. His face is stony and expressionless, but his eyes are not empty.
I take his face between my hands.
“I’m so sorry that happened to you,” I say. I lean forward and brush my lips against his, and my heart tears in two with longing for him, for more than I’m willing to give it.