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“Laila…” I press my lips to the back of her neck. “This isn’t going to help. Trust me.”
“Don’t!” She digs her nails into my arms. “You have no right to tell me how to deal with her death. You’re the reason she’s dead!”
I’m just another thing in this room she wants to destroy.
“You and your team of fancy fucking doctors—what did they do in the end? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. It’s like everything else with you: all talk, no action. You’re just a hollow man with nothing to offer.”
And I thought she’d done her worst on the room. Apparently, that was just the warmup.
Everything in me wants to fight back. I’m not one for taking an attack lying down. But for the first time in my life, I bite my tongue.
“I know you’re hurting?—”
“I’m not ‘hurting,’” she rages, digging her nails in deeper until she draws blood. “I’m being honest. I was a fool not to see that you’re just like my father.”
I half-wish she’d stop talking and pull out a knife. That would be easier to deflect.
“Both of you are just selfish men who didn’t give a shit about their wives or children, who used their families for their own personal gain. Mom might have forgiven Charles, but I will never,everforgive you, Arsen Adamov.”
I wrench her nails out of my skin and pin her arms to her chest. “I’ve heard you. You’ve said your piece. That’s enough now.”
“You don’t get to tell me when it’s enough,” she hisses. “You don’t own me. You don’t control me—argh!”
Her words cut off as I pick her up and carry her into the bathroom. She struggles, but her energy was spent destroying the room. There’s none left to fight me now.
I set her on the countertop, but I don’t let go, just in case she digs deep and finds a second wind.
But Laila only stares at me, her eyes dark and empty like she hasn’t slept in days. Her shoulders sag under the weight of the last twelve hours.
There are bloody footprints across the tile. Her arms are sliced, too—thin cuts zigzag up her forearms and purple bruises pool across her knuckles.
“You’re a mess.”
“You’re the one that made me this way.”
“I know.”
She narrows her eyes, wincing as I start to clean the cuts on her arms. “You’re agreeing with me? Is this some kind of trick?”
“I’ve always tried to be honest with you, Laila.”
“Breaking promises isn’t honesty, Arsen,” she snaps. “It’s the ultimate ‘fuck you’ to someone who thought they could count on you.”
“I did what I thought I had to do. I know you don’t understand that?—”
“You stole her from me.” Her voice breaks on the words, and she twists her face away so I don’t see her crumble.
“And I’m sorry for that.”
“If only ‘sorry’ fixed things.”
She doesn’t say anything or look at me. We spend the next half-hour in silence as I bandage her feet and tend to the cuts on her arms. But even when she’s all patched up, the damage is far from healed.
Some bleeding—the kind you can’t see—isn’t so easy to stop.
She’s so exhausted she can barely stand. I take her into the closest guest bedroom and settle her under the covers. To my surprise, she lets me.
I draw the curtains, dousing the room in darkness. But when I turn around, I can see her watching me. Her tired eyes are still open, flashing in the darkness.
