Page 34 of Villainous Rise

Fuck.

This wasn’t what I wanted. I hadn’t brought her here to reduce her to this. I’d been so caught up in my own anger, at Valor, at myself, that I’d lashed out, cutting exactly where I knew it would hurt most.

“Annie,” I started, but she cut me off.

“No. Don’t.” She wiped roughly at her tears, smearing mascara across her cheek. “You’ve made your point. I’m pathetic. I’m alone. I’m going to die alone because I’m too damaged to let anyone get close.”

She shoved my hand away from her waist, but I didn’t step back.

She gave a broken laugh. “I used to think you were different when you were with me. That I got to see the real you behind the mask. But there is no real you, is there? Just layers of masks. And underneath it all, just emptiness.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Just a little boy who never learned how to love because nobody ever loved him.”

I staggered back, turning away from her, unable to let her see what her words had done.

Memories crashed over me, pulling me under so quickly I couldn’t put up my defenses. My mother’s distant gaze. My father’s clinical assessment of my “condition.” The doctors with their needles and electrodes. My siblings’ mockery. The isolation room at school where they put me when I became “overwhelmed” or “difficult.”

“Cipher?”

No one touching me except to restrain or examine. No one speaking to me except to correct or diagnose.

“Cipher.” Annie’s voice penetrated the roaring in my ears, softer now.

I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t speak. Couldn’t move. How the fuck had I given someone, anyone, that weapon to use against me?

And she wielded it so well.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

I heard her footsteps approaching behind me, felt her hand hesitantly touch my shoulder. The gentleness of it nearly broke me.

“I didn’t mean that.”

“You did.” I finally found my voice. “And you’re right.”

I turned to face her, wishing for once that my mask covered my mouth too, that she couldn’t see any part of me.

“I don’t know how to love without destroying,” I admitted. “I don’t know how to want without taking. I never wanted to hurt you.” The words felt inadequate even as I spoke them.

I watched her face soften. Even now, after everything I’d done, after the vicious words I’d just hurled at her like weapons, she was trying to comfort me. To soothe the hurt she’d caused.

It made me fucking sick.

Not with her. With myself. Because Annie was good. Fundamentally, unshakably good. Even when she was hurting, even when she had every right to tear me apart, she couldn’t sustain that cruelty. It wasn’t in her nature.

I didn’t deserve that goodness. I never had.

“I wanted—” I trailed off, not knowing really what the fuck I wanted. To possess her? To keep her? To make her mine in ways that would probably destroy everything that made her Annie?

I’d spent my entire life taking what I wanted. Manipulating and acquiring. People were assets or obstacles, useful or irrelevant. Even Annie had started that way. A puzzle to solve, a body to enjoy.

Until she wasn’t. Until she became essential in ways I couldn’t quantify or control.

“What do you want, Annie?”

Annie reached up toward my mask. I could have stopped her. Should have stopped her.

But I didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. Just watched as she found the edge of my mask and slowly peeled it away. Her fingertips lingered on my cheekbone and it took every ounce of my control to keep from turning my head and pressing my mouth into her palm.

I felt exposed as my eyes met hers directly for the first time in months, with nothing between us.