Back at Emily’s, when we were discussing everything that’d gone down between Adam and Chase, I’d felt furious. I wanted my pound of flesh. But now, I felt nervous, apprehensive even. What if this backfired spectacularly and I’d put myself in danger coming here? I’d always been convinced that Adam would never hurt me. Hurt for me, as was clearly the case today, but actually hurt me… no. But had I been naïve in that respect?
I felt the nerves flow through me as my hand hovered over the wood, ready to knock. My stomach was doing backflips and I was shaking like a leaf. I touched my shell necklace, reminding myself that I needed to channel my inner warrior. I’d come this far, and I was no quitter. I had something to say, and he was going to hear it. Fuck it. I bypassed knocking, just like Colton had said, and turned the door handle.
Let’s just get this over with.
I stepped into his room and closed the door behind me. That manly smell that was all him hung heavy in the air, and my stomach flipped over again, but this time it wasn’t from nerves. I wasn’t ready to address what it actually was, but it definitely wasn’t fear.
Looking around the sparse bedroom, I couldn’t see him lurking anywhere. He wasn’t here. I guessed I’d been sent in here alone and he would follow when he was good and ready, like some kind of twisted waiting room, for him to play a little more with my patience and my nerves. Or maybe he was watching me from a secret hideaway, and he had a camera stashed somewhere in the room? Perhaps he wanted to study me first, see where my head was at? I wouldn’t put anything past him. Just in case, I stood tall and stuck my middle finger up, flicking the bird into all four corners of the room so he could see it.
“Take that, you fucking freak,” I whispered under my breath, and then I heard a grunt coming from the other side of his bed, and cautiously, I tiptoed around to the other side and found his dog curled up in a basket on the floor.
“Hey, boy,” I said, bending down to stroke him and scratch behind his ears. “Where’s your owner, hey? Is he hiding from me?”
I heard the click of a door unlocking behind me, and in my crouched state, I turned to see another door–different to the one I’d walked through–open up and Adam come strolling out like he was a model on a runway.
I couldn’t speak or move for a few seconds. I felt paralysed. I’d forgotten how striking he was up close. For someone who oozed the kind of intimidation that’d scare most people away, he didn’t scare me.
His eyes were piercing, as if every time he looked at me, he wasn’t just observing but assessing, claiming, and as he walked further into the room, he kept that gaze solely on me. Probably to intimidate me, but the intensity he used to stare at me made me feel stripped bare. Warm almost. Like he wanted to know every inch of my body and my soul. Devour me to understand me better but leave me in ruins as a result. His jaw held a dusting of stubble that looked good on him, I couldn’t lie, and his mouth always seemed to be twisted in some kind of smirk, like he couldn’t wait to be given an opportunity to lash out with his tongue. To create the maximum impact of damage with his brain as well as his body. He had a scar on his forehead that I’d never noticed before, and I had to stop myself from asking about it. I wasn’t here to make small talk. He needed to be told that what’d happened today was out of order. He needed to back off. So why was I frowning to myself and purposefully holding myself back from asking about what had happened to cause that scar? Why did I even care?
He stood still for a moment in the middle of the room, and he watched me as I knelt next to his dog. I was rendered speechless for the first time in a long time, and I think he felt the same. Neither one of us knew what to say to start this off. So, I did what came naturally. I broke the ice with an off-hand comment.
“You’re lucky you have such a loyal dog. At least you’ll always have a friend. So when the rest of the world finds out what an asshole you are, he’ll still be by your side.”
I had to tear my gaze away from Adam and focus on the dog. His stare was too intense and unnerving, even for me, and when my put-down made him smile, I had to bite my tongue and think of what my next move would be. He liked the way we bantered, and I had to make sure I didn’t play into his hands. I had to be smarter before he tied me up in knots and I ended up feeling like he’d played me, not the other way around. He did have a way of twisting things, a macabre skill of making me second guess everything.
“Why do you think I keep him around?” Adam answered in a low voice, taking a step closer towards me. “I’d trust him over any man I’ve ever met. He’s a friend for life.”
I found his answer kind of sad, but telling, all the same. If I had a dog, I’d probably feel the same way. We were alike in that aspect. We didn’t trust easily. But I didn’t trust him at all, and so I didn’t let his small hint of humanity sway me. I had a job to do, and I needed to get it done.
I gave Tyson one last scratch behind his ear and then stood up, bracing myself for what was about to go down.
“You need to stop.” I looked him right in the eye, shutting my brain off with its ridiculous notions about intensity and hypnotic attraction. I think I’d been reading too many of Effy’s and Emily’s romance novels. I wasn’t about to become the weak heroine that falls for the bad boy’s charms because of the way he looks at her.
“Stop what?” He cocked his head to the side, a small smirk playing at the corner of his lips that made my beating heart go from fluttering to fuming in a nanosecond. He thought this was a joke. This was all a game to him. He thought that he could play with people’s feelings and get away with it. But his days of toying with mine were over. I wasn’t his, and I never would be.
“This,” I snapped, gritting my teeth and pointing from myself to him and back again. “All this. It stops. Now.” He laughed at me and shook his head, which only spurred me on even more. “Don’t fucking laugh at me.”
“I’m not laughing at you, Olivia. I’m laughing at the fact that you think you can control this.” He took another step closer to me. “There is no stopping this. It’ll never stop.”
I huffed but stood my ground, folding my arms over my chest and taking a deep breath to steady myself. I wouldn’t let him intimidate me.
“Can you even hear yourself?” I asked, looking at him with exasperation in my eyes. “Do you know how ridiculous you sound? You’re crazy! I can’t believe I ever engaged in any kind of response with you. I can’t believe I’ve kept this going for as long as I have. I know I’m partly to blame in all of this, but you can’t message me anymore. It’s dangerous, stupid, totally and utterly ridiculous, and it’s gone too far.” I pointed my finger at him. “You’ve gone too far.”
“I don’t think I’ve gone far enough.” He rubbed the back of his neck and that sinister smile appeared again. “I think I did the right thing today. It ended well for me, anyway. It got you here.”
“Jesus, will you listen to yourself. You stabbed a guy. Okay, he might be a really shitty guy, but you stabbed him, Adam. Over me. That’s not right. And I’m not here for some social call. I don’t want to see you. I needed to see you to make sure you knew that this is over. This silly little game you think we’re playing, it’s done. After today, I don’t want to ever see or hear your name. You are nothing to me.”
My declaration didn’t penetrate through any of his walls. Instead, he grinned and replied, “Where I come from, he was asking for it.”
“Where you come from?” I scoffed. “Where is that exactly? Manson’s family? Because as far as I’m concerned, that isn’t right in anyone’s world. Not a sane world, anyway. Ugh! I can’t do this, Adam. Are you even listening to me?”
“Oh, I’m listening,” he replied, and the smirk that he’d had since he came into this room turned to a serious stare. “I hear everything you say. But not just with your mouth.”
“What the hell are you on about now?”
“I hear when you’re nervous,” he whispered. “Because you do that thing where you twist your hair around your finger.”
I untwirled my hair from my finger as fast as I could and glared back at him. So he knew I played with my hair. Big deal. Didn’t everyone know that? But he didn’t stop there. He carried on.
“The way you swallow and your eyes dart to the left when you don’t know what to say and you need time to think.”
I swallowed again. Where the hell was all this coming from?
“The way you put one foot in front of the other and drop your hip to pretend to look confident, but you’re not.”
Fuck, why was he listing all the things I was doing right now?
“And there’s a pulse…” He was standing right in front of me, God knows when that’d happened, and he reached forward to gently graze his finger down the right side of my neck. “A gentle beat… just here, that I always notice when you’re angry.” He leant his face forward so his nose was touching mine. “I hear everything.”
I shuffled backwards, backing myself up against the wall, but not caring in the slightest that I’d probably put myself in a worse position. I needed to get away from him. I had to remove myself from the strange vortex he’d created just now. I couldn’t breathe with him this close to me.
“It’s not gonna stop.” He shook his head, a deadly serious expression on his face as he stalked towards me again. “It’s never going to end.”
“It can and it will,” I stated firmly.
“What are you afraid of?” He tilted his head and frowned at me. “Is it me?”
“I’m not afraid of you.” I huffed out a smile, but I was nervous, and the corners of my mouth twitched, refusing to maintain the grin I’d wanted to give him.
“So you must be afraid of facing your true feelings then? You’re afraid that you want this more than you’ll admit.”
“I don’t want anything from you!” I snapped. “Why would you think I do? Okay, so maybe I’ve led you on a little, and I’m sorry for that–”
“You’re sorry.” He lifted his eyes to the ceiling and shook his head again, then slowly he looked back down at me, and I could tell he didn’t believe me.