My arms fly wildly as my fists beat into his chest and I scream. I scream so loudly that I’m sure someone will call the cops, but I don’t care. Stone tries to restrain me, but I fight because that’s all I’ve ever known. All men have ever taught me is to fight because if I don’t, they’ll use me until there’s nothing left.
“Stop it, Em. You’re gonna hurt yourself.”
Stone pins my arms against the wall, imprisoning me. I hate him. I hate what he did ten years ago. I hate that he’s here now. But I also love him, I never stopped loving him, and I never will. But I’m not willing to tell him that part. So, I tell him about the only other truth in my heart. “The only person who’s ever really hurt me is you.”
“You can lie to yourself all you want, Emily, but you can’t lie to me,” Stone says. The venom in his voice is clear. “I’m the only one who’s ever protected you. My whole damn life has been about protecting you.”
I tug at my arms. He lets go, and I slap him in the face. Protect me? What he did was expose me. What he did was rip my heart to shreds and abandon me.
He opens his arms and steps closer to me. The heat from his body is so overwhelming that I can’t even think. “You need to punish me, Em? You want me to be your punching bag? Go ahead. Use me until you’ve had your fill because, baby, you’re fuckin’ stuck with me for life.”
I hit him. Then again. I punch him, slap him. Claw at his flesh before the tears finally escape with nowhere else to go other than down my face in ugly streaks, forcing me to collapse into his arms. “Why did you come back? To fuckin’ ruin me again. I moved on. I put you behind me. You broke my fuckin’ heart, and I managed to haphazardly tape it back together.”
Stone clings tightly to me, holding me close to his chest. He smells like sex and violence, but under that, I can still smell Ivory soap. I want to bathe myself in that scent, a scent that always comforted me. He sways back and forth while he cradles me, holding me as if I’m delicate and one false step might cause me to shatter into a million pieces.
I’m angry that he’s seeing me so weak. I don’t want him to see me like this, to know that he has this kind of hold on me, this kind of power. “You can’t break me. No one can. I’m not some pathetic girl weeping, waiting for a big man to come and save her. I don’t need you, Stone. I’ll be fine without you.”
He pulls back, and I see the pain in his eyes, the longing, the regret. He’s not trying to hide anything from me. He wants me to see it all. He presses his forehead to mine, his words hoarse as if he might break. “You don’t need me. I’m the one who fuckin’ needs you.”
“Tell me the truth, Stone.”
“I’ve never lied to you,” he growls, turning his back to me. “Fuck.”
I walk over to him, getting right in his face. He looks like he wants to punch something as his hands form fists at his sides. “Fuckin’ talk to me. It’s been ten years. You owe me.”
Stone’s fist connects with the wall behind my head. Fragments of paint and drywall fall to the floor. I turn to see the giant hole in the wall, more evidence of his volatile temper.
“Typical. Whenever you can’t fuckin’ function like a normal human being, your solution is to hit or murder. What are you gonna do, Stone? Kill me because I won’t let you keep me in the dark anymore?”
His eyes flash with anger, then pain. The anger I can take but the fact that I’m the reason he feels any pain slices through me, leaving me raw and exposed.
The pain is short-lived because the rage takes hold of him. His nostrils flare, and his blue eyes become distant and ice cold. He steps up to me, closing the distance between us. In this situation, I’m the one who has no breathing room.
“I’m protecting you,” he snarls.
“No. You’re not. You’re lying to me. I need to understand what happened. You got any idea what I’ve been through? Any idea of the horror I’ve experienced?”
He goes still. Stone says nothing. His eyes flash with genuine fear, something I haven’t seen since he was thirteen. “What’ve you been through?”
“It doesn’t matter. That’s in the past.”
He presses his body up against mine, and I step back until I hit the wall behind me with a violent thump.
“That’s it, Butterfly. It’s the past. It doesn’t matter, so I don’t need to tell you shit.”