The thing is, he made me feelpicked.
Selected for beingme..
Not for being “a De Luca”. Not for being “Nero and Milena’s daughter”. Not for being “the girl who didn’t report what happened this past summer”, or “the girl with the fucked-up fantasies.”
He made me feel specifically chosen in a way I’ve never felt before.
But it’s only now that I realize I’m not sureIever chosehim.
I never had a choice.
The game was rigged from the start.
So now, I’m walking away from that game.
Thunder.
41
ACHILLES
Lochlan frownsas he takes a sip of his beer, then clears his throat as he glances across the poker table at me and lifts a brow.
“You wanna talk about it?”
I’d rather shove fire ants up my urethra.
Not because Idon’twant to talk about the “everything is shit” cataclysm of Yelena having used her safe word last night. But because I don’t even know how or where to start.
There’s not going to be some earth-shattering moment of self-realization over beers with my cousins where I “suddenly understand the error of my ways.”
There’s not going to be a cartoon lightbulb winking on over my head as it occurs to me that stalking someone—hacking their computer, their life, and their darkest most private secrets—iswrong.
I’m perfectly aware it's wrong. I’m fully cognizant that what I did concerning Yelena is, objectively speaking, bad.
The problem is,I don’t care.
I'm not saying I don’t care that I hurt her. Nothing could be further from the truth, and the fact that Ididhurt her is fucking eating me alive right now.
But the stalking?
Not one single spark of regret.
And that might be part of the problem.
I obviously feel like absolute shit for hurting her. For the way I mishandled the whole thing to the point where she said her fucking safe word last night and in doing so walked away from all that we had, and all that we were.
Have.Are.
Fuck. This is confusing.
Yelena being hurt at all breaks me. Knowing it's because ofmeshatters me into a million pieces.
And yet I still don’t, and won’t, apologize for what I did.
Not for stalking her. Not for prying into her darkest secrets. I’m not rethinking the ways I inserted myself into her life.
I’llneverregret any of that.
