Two Can Play (Celeste and Dominic) novel Chapter 473

He stared down at his own ruined hand, and then he smiled. A strange, tired, self-mocking smile. "So. Does this make you feel better now? I am also hurting now, right?"

I looked at him, and for a long moment I could not find my voice. Of all the things I had expected from him tonight, this had not been one of them. Punching a wall to prove a point. The most dramatic, childish, infuriating thing a man could do, and somehow he had made it work, because I did feel better. A little. The sight of his blood running over his knuckles had loosened something in my chest that all his words had not reached.

I wanted to take his hand. I wanted to drag him into the bathroom and run warm water over the wounds and press the balm into his broken skin the way he had tried to do for my neck. My fingers actually twitched toward his wrist.

Then I remembered Tasha. Tasha sitting on the floor of her room with her skin flayed open, crying into the dark. And I pulled my hand back.

I could not tend to him. Not while she was hurting.

But I could not stand there and let him break himself while I watched, either. He would do it again, I realized. He would stand in the middle of my room and bleed on my floor and punch the wall again and again until I gave him what he wanted. None of it made any sense to me, still I nodded.

"Fine. Yes. I am not upset anymore. I will put it behind us."

He searched my face for a long moment, then nodded once. "Okay."

He turned and walked out of my room without another word, his hand dripping blood onto the hallway floor as he went. I stood there watching him go, and I wondered at the strangeness of it. He had barely blinked when I told him I was done being angry.

He had simply accepted it and walked away. A man who did not care whether I was upset would not have punched a wall. A man who cared would have stayed. Sparrow had done neither, and I did not have the energy left to figure out which one he was.

"What?" The word came out strangled. "Tasha, how could you say that? I would never hurt you. I could never hurt you. You are everything to me."

I reached out to cup her face, and she slapped my hand away.

"I don't need your help, Scarlett." Her voice cracked and hardened at the same time. "I do not need anything from you. Get out of my room."

"Don't say that." I shook my head, my eyes burning. "Listen to me. I know you are in pain. I know you are scared. But have you ever, in your whole life, seen me try to hurt you? Have you ever seen me send anyone to hurt you? I cannot bear the thought of you losing a single hair on your head, Tasha. How much more do I have to show you before you believe me?"