"I haven't?—"
"Don't fucking lie to me!" His voice explodes, loud enough to echo across the property. "You think I'm stupid? You think I don't know why you came running back here?"
My heart is racing. My hands are shaking.
This is the Wes I've seen in flashes. The one who appears when things don't go his way. The one I've always made excuses for.
"You need to leave," I say, trying to keep my voice steady. "Right now."
"Or what?" He sneers. "You'll call your ex to come save you? Jesus, Nora, the damsel in distress routine doesn’t suit you.”
"Get. Off. This. Property."
"Make me."
He steps forward, closing the distance between us, and before I can react, his hand shoots out and grabs my upper arm.
Hard.
Not a touch. Not a grip.
A bruising hold that makes me gasp.
His fingers dig into my skin with a force that's meant to hurt. Meant to control. Meant to remind me that he's stronger, that he can, that he will. Pain radiates up my arm. Sharp and immediate.
"You don't get to walk away from me," he says, his face inches from mine. "Do you understand? You don't get to humiliate me and then just disappear like I don't matter."
"Let go of me." My voice is shaking now, but there's steel underneath.
His grip tightens. I can already feel the bruises forming.
"Not until you listen?—"
"I told you to never lay your hands on me again."
The words come out low. Deadly serious.
Because this isn't the first time. It's just the first time I'm not making excuses for it. His eyes flash with something dark. Something that tells me he knows exactly what I'm referring to.
The night in New York when we fought about the premiere I missed. When he grabbed my wrist hard enough to leave marks. When he apologized the next day with flowers and promises it would never happen again.
When I believed him.
"That was different," he says, but his grip doesn't loosen. "You're being irrational?—"
"Let. Go. Of. Me."
"Get your hands off her."
The words cut through the air like a blade—not loud, but carrying absolute authority.
I hadn't even heard Nate approach. He's standing ten feet away, grocery bag in one hand, and everything about him has gone completely still.
Not frozen. Still. The kind of stillness that precedes violence.
His jaw is set and his eyes are locked on Wes's hand gripping my arm with an intensity that makes the air feel thinner.
He looks ready to kill.
