Medicine Man

This time, he moves in closer. He takes not one but two steps, three. Until he’s looking over me. A black, thundering cloud with gray eyes and a stubbled, hard jaw.

“I fucked you,” he says rudely. “Despite my better judgment, I fucked my patient. You’re young. Beautiful. There’s a wildness in you that called to me. And yes, you’re tight as fuck, Willow, and men like that. I’m a man, aren’t I? A weak, pathetic man who couldn’t resist a good fuck. That’s what it was. That’s what you felt. A man in heat. A man going for tight-as-fuck pussy. I don’t know how else to explain it to you. How much plainer I can get but this is it, you understand? It was fucking phenomenal, but it was just that. A fuck.”

I’m watching his mouth move, I’m seeing it happen, but I can’t believe it. I can’t believe the things he’s saying.

“No,” I whisper.

Or maybe I just shake my head.

Or maybe I do both.

Everything is a little confusing right now. It has been this way since I found out about the books.

“Yes. I don’t have feelings for you. I never did, and I never will. You’ll get out of here tomorrow like you were meant to. And we’ll probably never see each other again, like we were meant to.” He straightens up then. “But I’m not the kind of man who shirks away from responsibilities. If you feel inclined to report this, I won’t stop you.”

Report him?

Is that what he’s thinking of right now? That I’ll report him? Is that what’s going through his head when he’s breaking my heart?

“In fact, I’d encourage you to,” he continues with a grave face. “You don’t want someone like me taking advantage of you in the future.”

“I-in the future?”

“Yes. In the future.”

“Is that what you think about, when you think of the future? Me with someone else?”

“Frankly, I haven’t thought much about you and the future at all.”

I have so many thoughts inside my head. They are screaming and screaming, battering down my skull but for some reason only a whisper slips out. “You’re lying.”

He studies my face. His gray, harsh-as-winter eyes follow the path of my tears. Non-stop and never-ending but silent, unlike the chaos in my head.

Moving away, he walks to his desk, picks something up before turning around. I look down to find him offering me a tissue.

He carries it so casually as he replies, “I’m not you.”

Something happens to me then.

Something that I’ve experienced before for sure, but not with this intensity. Not with this ferociousness and savagery.

For reasons unknown, Simon Blackwood has always managed to make me smile, make me happy, make me calm.

So it’s probably fair, poetic even, that he’s the one to awaken the hurricane inside me.

He’s the one to make me fucking lose it.

All the screaming and shouting inside my head breaks free as I launch myself at him. I fucking ram my body against his like I’m a train wreck. A wrecking ball.

I don’t know what I’m doing except I know I’m screaming and my hands are moving like a windmill. My fists are colliding with something hard, something solid and all I know is that I wanna beat it, batter it, roar at it.

I wanna smash that solid, coiled strength and reduce it to what I am right now: broken and bruised.

And why not?

The man I’ve flown my body into doesn’t seem very inclined to stop me. Maybe he knows he deserves it. He deserves every single punch, every single kick, every single scratch on his neck, on his face, every single push and tug of his shirt, his hair.

He deserves all of it. All of my wrath.

I’m hitting him and hitting him and crying and sobbing, all the while calling him a liar.

Because he is. He has to be.

If he isn’t, then I’m fucking insane. I’m a psycho to think that he ever loved me.

I don’t know how long I’ve been going at him, slapping him, punching him, but one second, I’m striking his solid frame, flaying my own knuckles, and the next, I’m flying through the air, it seems, my legs dangling, my screams louder than ever.

There’s a band around my waist, a warm, alive band. Someone’s arm.

Through my rage and the blur of my tears, I see the crowd gathered inside the room. I see Simon all messed up, his shirt untucked, scratches along the line of his jaw and face.

He’s trying to say something to me, probably calm me down. There are other people, too. They are saying things to me as well. But I can’t listen to them. I don’t want to.

I want Simon to tell me why he was lying.

Why is he breaking my heart? Why is he doing this to me? What have I done to deserve this?