“Damn you, Birdie Abel.” I sigh. “If you’re wrong about this...”
“I’ll owe you one hell of an apology.”
My strides aren’t fast enough. I reach her and lift my hand next to her cheek, but I don’t touch her. “Not enough.”
She steps forward, placing her foot between my feet, her body grazing mine. “What else do you want?”
You. “Stop playing games. You already know what I want.”
“I want to hear you say it.”
My tongue darts to lick her breath that has just fanned my face. Then my upper lip curls under my teeth to contain the hammering of my heart—and hopefully the swelling in my pants. “When I prove to you Torrance is Butterfly Man, I’ll get rid of him, and then…you will be mine.”
“Someone has just grown a pair. A brazen one, too.” A tilt of her lips unfolds slowly, equal parts charm and warning, promising both pleasure and pain. A gesture that somehow manages to be both playful and menacing. There’s something cruel in it, sharp as a blade and twice as dangerous. Paired with the sardonic arch of her brow and that gleam in her blue eyes, it becomes her most effective weapon—one that disarms before you even realize you’re under attack. A smile that says she knows something I don’t, and she’s enjoying every second of my ignorance.
A predator’s smile, a hint of the monster lurking beneath the beautiful camouflage. “You’re forgetting a tiny little thing, aren’t you?”
“Never forgotten. I’ll get rid of your husband, too, Birdie. You have my word.”
She grunts. “But if you’re wrong?”
“What do you want?”
The smile turns into a smirk. “You’ll put all of this behind, and we’ll go our separate ways. You will forget all about me, Tristan, and never look back.”
The muscles in my jaw clench so hard I can hear my teeth creaking, but I force that twisted smile anyway, one that feels like glass shards cutting into my cheeks. “You mean let you be with Torrance while I fucking watch and do nothing.”
She doesn’t answer, but the silence says it all. She’s asking me to let her go. To watch her walk away with him. To pretend that every moment, every touch, every shared breath between us meant nothing.
My mind spins, replaying images I don’t want to see: the way he fucking looks at her, at her body, her smile directed at him, her laughs at his whispers…. Rage builds in my gut. My hands shake as I shove them into my pockets to hide the evidence. I want to break something. Everything.
The pressure builds behind my eyes, in my chest, threatening to explode. Each breath feels like inhaling broken glass, and still, she stands there, looking at me with those eyes that only make it worse. Because I can see it—the pity. The fucking pity.
I want to laugh. Or cry. Or howl. Instead, I stand here, drowning in this toxic cocktail of love and hate and jealousy that’s eating me alive, as she asks me to let her choose someone else in peace while pretending I’m not dying inside.
Words bubble up my throat—bitter, angry words that taste like copper and ash. I swallow them back, but they sit there, burning. She has no idea how much I’m holding back, how much it takes to stand here and not grab her, shake her, fuck her until she’s pieces, to make her see what she’s doing to me. The urge to destroy something beautiful pulses through me witheach heartbeat, matching the rhythm of these thoughts I can’t control: Mine. Should be mine. Only mine.
But I stay still, while everything inside me screams and rages and begs to be let loose. Because that’s what she wants, for me to be reasonable, controlled, understanding. To be the bigger person while she rips my heart out with her gentle hands and kind words about “moving on” and “what’s fucking best.”
The worst part? Even now, even like this, I still love her. And that makes me hate myself most of all.
“I will…not be wrong, Birdie.”
CHAPTER 12
Birdie
Sleep has found me again. The soothing sounds of nature and waves, along with the sense of freedom no one knows where I am, have silenced the havoc and allowed me some peace at last. In these precious moments before consciousness fully claims me, I float in the space between nightmares and reality, where I can pretend I’m just another soul seeking solitude on this island.
Then I wake up, and the weight of facts crashes over me, each truth a rock pressing against my chest until breathing becomes an act of defiance.
I curl up by the window, my laptop on my thighs—Brandon brought it and some clothes with him yesterday—a cursor blinking on a blank page.
He’s splitting wood outside, shirtless in March, I might add. Tristan is in the kitchen. He’s chopping garlic and herbs with military precision.
For a romance author, this is a deluge of inspiration. Based on this scene alone, my mind plots four and a half books with thirteen steamy chapters I won’t even write. For a woman, in a secluded cabin with two muscular bodyguards all to herself, it’s a pleasant distraction, a fantasy coming true and a dangerous temptation.
For me, a woman and an author, however, it’s a nuisance. Because one of them looks like he needs a fake ID to drink, whose eight-pack can’t distract me enough from the face that reminds me of my worst mistake, and the other is…well, Tristan.
