Her hair is tied up, messy and effortless, leaving her neck exposed—pale, smooth skin just begging to be marked.Mine.
I grit my teeth because the truth is, I'd break her.
In every fucking way.
“You have no idea who I am.”
Sometimes I don’t even know.
“I want to know you,” she says simply. “But what I do know is, you care about your family. You carry the weight of being the oldest, like it’s your penance. You fix your motorbike even when there’s nothing wrong with it, just to keep your hands busy. You hate using your phone, probably because you don’t actually know how to work it.”
A small laugh escapes her, and it cuts through the tension like sunlight through storm clouds.
“And deep down,” she goes on, softer now. “You’re just a big, grumpy teddy bear to the people you love. You pretend you’re made of stone, but I know the scar on your face still aches.”
I stare at her wide-eyed.Fuck.
She smirks, proud of herself. “I know more than you think. And I also know… You used to sleep around, because you convinced yourself you didn’t deserve to be loved.”
She’s too close. Too right. It pries me open in ways I’ve fought my whole life to avoid.
“No. That’s where you’re wrong.”
She waits, watching me.
“I don’t know how to love.”
It’s not that I don’t want to, I just never learned how. I just know pain.
“You think I do? No one really knows how to love. Not perfectly. Everyone’s version of it is different. But if they’re your person—the one who you’d go to war for, the one you don’t want anyone else touching, the one you’d burn entire realms to protect… then yeah. That’s love to me.”
I let out a sharp breath and pinch the bridge of my nose. “You love more than one man,” I grit out, needing to say it, needing her to hear it.
She doesn’t blink. “And?”
I shake my head. “All I’ve ever known how to do is fuck, Ravena.” My voice drops, colder now, harsher—because that’s easier than admitting to anything else. “I use women. Always have. They’re just a hole. A way to get off. That’s it.”
The words taste like acid as they leave me, but I want her to hear the worst of me. I want her to see the ugliness and run.
She presses her lips into a thin line, thinking. Calculating. “Then why haven’t you slept with another woman since meeting me?”
I wish I knew.
I dig my fingernails into my palms, the answer stuck in my throat. I tried. I really fucking tried. A few times, I went out hoping to lose myself in someone else, anyone else. But the second I got close, her face was all I saw. That voice. That scent—cherries and vanilla that always invades my senses.
My silence stretches too long, so I throw out the only deflection I have left. “Who says I haven’t?”
Her eyes narrow, amused. “Ronan.”
“Why am I not surprised?” I mutter, dragging a hand down my face. “That guy can’t keep his mouth shut.”
Her expression doesn’t shift. “Is he wrong?”
My throat tightens.
“Tell me now,” she continues, “that you feel nothing. That there’s no chance—no possibility—of anything between us, that you don’t want me, and I’ll walk away. You won’t hear another word about it.”
I bite down hard on my tongue.
