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“I gave you a beautiful room, one that you spied on me from when I was out with Trouble. I gave you paint supplies.”
He listed the trivial stuff but deepened the conversation just as I was about to use his chest to push away from him again.
“I gave you attention that I never planned to...but yes, I did trick you. There’s no justifying that.” His dangerous smile exposed fangs, ready to sink into me and rip out all my truths. “And I will always love Chandelle.”
My heart exploded in my chest. I shouldn’t care about who he loved. But I did, and it hurt that he admitted it was her and not me after all I just said. After all we had done today.
I swallowed down my pain, but hearing her name made me shiver, and the omission he would never stop loving her replayed in that robotic voice over and over inside my head. I felt sick hearing it.
Mercer’s touch softened, whispering promises of gentleness that stalked down my spine as he stripped the dress, heavy with rainwater, from my body and tossed it into a heap on the floor.
I tried to look away as he did the same with his shirt, popping enough buttons to drag it sexily over his head.
I couldn’t keep my eyes off of him. And I couldn’t stop them from shedding tears, even as they locked on him, tracing all the details of his pretty tattoos.
His eyes glanced over my body, his gaze caressing each breast. He didn’t look at me with longing. This was something else…something hard and cold, and it made me shiver.
His fingers traced the scarred heart, and I knew I was never really meant to get that injury.
I shivered again, knowing he didn’t want me harmed, and that knife appearing back in the cell was not his doing but Damiano’s.
A remote at his side lit the fire opposite us. Orange heat filled the wall, condensation rising to the poorly placed mirror above.
“Thank you.” I appreciated the additional heat, but my voice was still heavy with sadness.
I couldn’t compete with Chandelle, and it hurt.
He sat vacant, listening in on all my silent thoughts somehow. His fingers glided over the touchscreen keyboard without even looking.
“She was my best friend. Nothing can change that. Nothing will change that. I know you don’t like it.”
“I guess you could say your plan worked well. You wanted me to fall for you. To rip out my heart like they did yours.”
“I could. But we both already know that it failed, too, in other ways. I can’t honestly say that I don’t care for you, and that was never meant to be part of the plan.”
“Is it only because I have her heart?”
“It’s because you're stealing mine. I can’t stop thinking about you.”
“You were kicking me out!”
“I was taking you home because I thought you needed your family’s support to overcome the trauma you had been through. I had every intention of killing your father until tonight. But I walked away, without blood on my hands, for you.”
His words sank in as rainwater dried between us, encouraging my tears to do the same. His feelings for me would have kept my father alive...and...and I was stealing his heart.
I didn’t make jokes about him not having one.
My mood was too low.
But I stopped crying long enough to let my nails trace the designs on his body to an inked woman with brunette hair. She didn’t look like Chandelle. She looked like me.
“I got her as an insult,” he told me.
There was a blank expression still on Mercer’s face as he continued.
“Chandelle was a childhood friend who became more, but we should have stuck it out as friends. There was never a time when we were it for each other.”
I found that hard to believe, given how much he loved her. Thoughts of her with him stole my warmth, and he wrapped me in a blanket—one she no doubt had chosen—to warm me back up.
