Breaking Him by R.K. Lilley

Author:R.K. Lilley [Lilley, R.K.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Love is War
Publisher: R.K. Lilley
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

TWENTY-TWO

“Go to Heaven for the climate. Hell for the company.”

~Mark Twain

PRESENT

Dante ripped his lips from mine so abruptly that it felt like a Band-Aid coming off.

He was panting into my face. “Tell me you don’t miss this,” he said emotionally.

This was what made him such a bastard. We were over, had been for years, but it didn’t matter. If he had his way, he’d keep me tied to him in so many ways I could never break loose. He was cruel like that.

I subjugated every pathetic thing inside of me that jumped to do his bidding. I would not feel what he was trying to make me feel.

“I don’t miss this,” I managed to get out through my constricted throat.

“Liar,” he breathed at me, madness in his eyes.

I shuddered, my own madness coming out to play. “No. No. No. I’m not the liar. You know why I don’t miss this? Because it’s a lie.”

It was his turn to shudder.

“Because it’s a lie,” I repeated.

He flinched.

“It was always a lie.”

“Don’t say that.”

“It was always a lie,” I repeated. “Want to know how I know?”

“Stop.”

“I won’t stop. I’m not finished. Want to know how I know?”

“Enough. Stop it. You’ll say any horrible thing when you’re in a temper.”

“I will, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t the truth. What we had was always a lie. I know because if it was real it wouldn’t have ended. It felt like forever, and forever was a lie.”

I’d won the round, I noted numbly as his shaking body withdrew back to his side of the car.

He gripped the steering wheel, staring straight ahead, shoulders hunched.

After a few drawn out minutes of silence he started driving again.

“You’re terrible at truces,” I said. It was an effort to keep my voice from trembling.

He nodded jerkily. “Ditto, tiger. Peace was never your strength. You were born for battle.”

“Look who’s talking?”

His mouth twisted. “A match made in hell.”

Wasn’t that the truth.

The problem with us was that he and I had become deeply attached in our formative years. Young me had become essential to young him and vice versa.

We were too precisely built together, each too profoundly shaped by the other. Every part of us had been assembled as one piece. Of course we did not function well after the construct had been ripped violently apart.

And of course I would despise the one who had done the ripping.

The car was silent as a tomb until we were nearly at the house, both of us trying to regain some composure, trying to reconcile ourselves to the past and come back to the present.

“Is my dress really too tight?” I asked him as he pulled down the long winding road that led to the house.

Grandma always got her digs in, and they always found a place to fester. I’d known the dress was flattering, provocative even. But was it trashy?

Dante cursed. “God, she always could get to you with her venom. No, it’s not too tight. You look amazing. Perfect. Gram would be proud.

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