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“Contempt.”
Her gaze stops roaming, and we stand silently for several seconds until she turns around, goes over to her chair, lifts the blinds behind it, opens the window, then tosses the flowers outside.
At least she’s upgraded from a garbage can.
Not bothering to close the window, she asks, “What happened to your ring?”
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
She faces me again, hands on her hips. “Am I ever?”
“My ring? The ring you gave me just to fuck with my head, to make me believe in you, in us? That ring? I threw it into the Hudson. It’s the first thing I did when I got out.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
The sleep set she’s wearing isn’t as expensive as the ones she used to wear with the hollow. It’s cotton and her top doesn’t match the bottoms. They’re both still black, but while the shorts are loose and flowy, the top is a tighter material that accentuates her tits. Tits that got bigger, not by much, but enough for me to notice. Enough for me to want to see them closer. Feel them. Taste them.
Shit! I roll my empty hands into tight fists, squeezing until my nails sting my palms.
She has changed. And not just physically. Lex looks like she’s home. In Kordin’s house, she never looked like she belonged. Or that she even wanted to be there. Here, she does. Here, she likes it, I can tell.
She’s still her, but a different version. A new one.
I hate that I don’t know this version. I hate that I don’t love this version more. I loved every version of her. I understood them. Understood her.
But that was before. Before she told me it was all fake, including her, including us.
Lex crosses the room again, not stopping until she’s directly under me and I have to look down my nose at her. The scar at her hairline is what draws my attention first because I always knew her flaws and I loved her, not despite them, butwiththem. She never had to hide any part of herself from me, yet she hid every part of herself from me.
She reaches up to brush my hair off my forehead. “Your hair—”
I catch her wrist, air pouring through my nose loudly.
Just as quickly, Lex’s other hand comes up, the ring in question balancing on the tip of her trigger finger.
I should’ve expected her to pickpocket me.
I should’ve thrown the ring in the river. After I got released and they handed me the belongings I got arrested carrying, I tried putting it back on, but it didn’t fit. I’ve put on weight, too. I hit the weights as often as I was allowed. That and fighting were the only things that distracted me. Distracted me…from Lex.
Plucking the ring off her fingertip, I shove past her, aiming for the same window, but before I even reach the chair, she wrenches my arm back, chopping me right in the Adam’s apple and making me fucking gasp for air.
“Don’tdo that,” she warns with so much authority I want to laugh in her face. Who the fuck does she think she is?
“Why not? It doesn’t mean anything. It never did.”
Releasing my arm, she shakes her head. I get the feeling she’s going to turn away, and panic seeps into my every cell, so I grab her bicep, making sure she can’t go anywhere. Not until she explains why she—
Lex’s fist collides with my nose, forcing my head to rotate back. I right it instantly though, pushing into her space.
“What the fuck? You punched me? Do you know how many hardened criminals I’ve fought?”
“Thirteen.”
“Wha—”
“Had you showed an ounce of fucking restraint in there, you would’ve been out sooner, but you couldn’t, could you? You had to fight. You had to make trouble. You had to lose good time that would’ve shaved off some of your sentence. Just like always, you made things so much harder than they needed to be.”
