Falling for the Villain

He shook his head. “Look, maybe you should talk to someone.”

I snorted out a laugh. “Oh good, you get back to me after you confess all your sins first; sound good? How many women did you kill after you fucked—”

“Enough,” he growled. “Don’t make this about me when we both know this is about you. Look … we just got you back, and I don’t want to fight for you anymore.”

“Then leave,” I whispered. “Just go.”

“Juliet—”

“Please.” I was close to begging. “Please, just go.”

Finally, he got up, his breathing loud. “The house is heavily guarded, especially now. All you have to do is text or approach one of the men if you need anything.”

“Everyone has their version of prison,” I announced more to myself than him. “They all look different, and weirdly enough, it all feels the same.”

“What?” He frowned.

“He didn’t set me free.” I shook my head, then clutched my phone in my hand. “He just handed me over to the jailer—again.”

Romeo said nothing.

He left the room.

I started texting Donovan with the phone he’d given me.

Me: I need to talk to you.

Nothing.

It said delivered but not read.

Me: I miss you. Please … please.

Nothing.

Done.

Over.

My villain was gone, never to return again.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Juliet

Six weeks later

I texted him like I always did.

While it said delivered, I knew he wasn’t reading them.

I guess it didn’t matter anyway. Somehow it had turned into my own personal therapy—texting him, filling him in on the mundane details of my normal life, one I no longer wanted if he wasn’t in it.

My stomach clenched yet again.

With a curse, I rushed toward the toilet and puked up my entire breakfast. At first, I thought it was heartache, and then the flu, and now… well, now I thought about all the times we’d had sex.

All the places.

All the instances when we didn’t use protection.

He was mine.

I was his.

We wanted nothing between us, condom included.

I knew my mom was concerned every time I rushed away from the dinner table or locked myself up in my room, crying.

The hardest part wasn’t keeping food in.

It was keeping the tears from falling.

Me: I haven’t been feeling well.

Me: Please answer me.

Me: I love you.

Delivered.

Delivered.

Delivered.

I threw the phone against the bed and laid back, staring up at the ceiling, not even realizing I was touching the front of my stomach, wishing, praying I had some small part of him.

No one talked about what I’d been through, and they didn’t have to ask. They witnessed it every day, from the way I carried myself to the way I talked and poured my eyes out during the day and night.

They knew I missed him with every fiber of my being. I thought a huge part of my family didn’t know how to take me. How to understand me, so it was better not knowing. I didn’t want to tell them. It was none of their business. I was an adult. A woman. Despite Donovan returning me as if I were nothing more than a child he was babysitting.

I wanted to hate him.

Hit him.

Fight for him.

It was a war I’d lose.

He had turned his back on me when I needed him the most. It was what killed my heart in the end.

I sighed, thinking about all the ways he called me “Pet.”

With anger.

With love.

I couldn’t hate him if I tried, and trust me, I fucking tried.

My therapist said it was Stockholm Syndrome that I was experiencing. I told her to eat shit and stopped going to her the very next day. I didn’t need anyone to tell me what I was going through. They didn’t know one damn thing about Donovan and what he’d been through. What he had to endure at the hands of monsters who turned him into his worst nightmare.

“The heart wants what it wants…” Mom whispered as the bed dipped, placing a small box on top of my stomach. “I think you know what to do with this.”

Hot tears burned the back of my eyes while I sat up and grabbed the small pregnancy test. “Is it wrong to hope that I am?”

Her eyes crinkled at the sides. “No. I guess you could say I know what it’s like to hope for a little girl, to pray every night, and then realize that I won’t ever have her. And then one day, your dad confessed something to me, something that you would think would tear a marriage apart.”

“He cheated,” I answered for her.

She looked away, and her blue eyes focused on the wall. “You know, I think back then I was just so glad he was honest with me right away, and I was able to forgive him, able to look him in the eyes as he owned up to his mistake and say, what do you want? Because at the end of the day, I still loved him, despite how he’d hurt me, but you don’t keep someone because you don’t want anyone else to have them. You keep them because you love them more than you love yourself. Love is confusing. It’s the most precious gift in the world. I wasn’t going to lose the man I loved for a meaningless night that he shared with your biological mother.”