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I slammed my eyes closed as I tried to focus. Wes was playing me, toying with me like I was an idiot who didn’t have a brain. He wanted my letter, and I wanted my property. There was no way forward for us, but it didn’t change how hurt I was over his words.
Victim. Princess.
Anger surged in my chest as I bucked my hips and screamed.
“Get off me!”
He sat up immediately, removing his body from mine. Confusion then worry flashed across his face as he searched my body for the reason I yelled. As if he’d hurt me physically.
Like he’d fucking care.
I scrambled up to stand and began dusting myself off as I turned away from him.
“Do not come near me, Wes. I mean it. I’m not a fucking toy. I’m not a…a—”
I couldn’t even process what I wanted to say with how hard my heart pounded in my chest, and how hurt I was over what he’d just done. Why was it so easy for him to pretend like nothing had ever happened between us?
Suddenly I turned, needing to shout that at him, because there was so much venom built up inside me that I needed to let it out.
“What did I ever do to you to make you hate me like this?”
My voice cracked as a few angry tears slid down my face.
He was standing now, dirt streaking the knee of his jeans and down the length of his legs. That strong jaw tensed again as he stared down at the ground.
I continued yelling. “I loved you, Wes! I was so in love with you, and then you changed. Overnight, you became a different person. Losing you, it made me feel…”
“Made you feel what?” He took a step forward, abruptly cutting me off. “Helpless, out of options, left with no other choice…did it make you feel like you were forced to cut out your own fucking heart?” The way his voice shook, the determined but lost look in his eyes, robbed me of breath.
What was he talking about?
Gold-brown eyes searched my face as though he was trying to silently communicate something, but my heart was pounding too hard to see clearly. I couldn’t look past this immediate situation long enough to go back and inspect what happened. Nevermind that I was basically asking him to do the same exact thing.
Shaking my head, I retreated another step, but he stepped forward and tugged my hand.
“I made a decision, Callie, and you left me because of it. What did you want me to do?”
My eyes widened as more tears flowed freely and unchecked down my face.
“I wanted you to choose me, Wes. I needed you to be different from my dad.”
He clenched his jaw tightly letting my hand go. “Yeah, well, at some point, it stopped being just about what you wanted. I wanted you, and you wanted out. Your dad was my family. Brooks, Killian, Hamish…they became my family, too.”
I pushed his shoulder again, hating the vile anger burning through me like a virus.
“What? Your perfect fucking family wasn’t enough, you needed mine too?”
Gripping my wrist, he glared down at me.
“Yes. I wanted yours too,River. I wanted all of you, everything you touched, all the air you breathed, the fucking dirt under your nails. I wanted it all. You knew I didn’t have a choice after that night, yet you punished me regardless.”
I didn’t punish him. He—my memories came in and out from around the time we’d broken up. He joined right around the same time I was taken. I came back, and everything was a whirlwind, but I accepted that he’d joined. For an entire year I stood by him while they put him through all the club shit, while he joined their church meetings and slowly slipped through my fingers. I hung on as long as I could, until I noticed my life looping, and I couldn’t bear the image of my own kids growing up like I did.
“All I remember, Wes, is you choosing a life you were too privileged to ever know anything about, and you chose it over me, effectively breaking my heart,” I whispered. “But it doesn’t matter anymore.” Seven years had swept us both away in different directions. So, no. It really did not matter because it wasn’t like we could go back in time and fix any of it.
“It wasn’t like I could leave, Cal. I made an oath.”
His arrogant tone wrapped around me like a rope, burning and chafing at my memories.
