Two Can Play (Celeste and Dominic) novel Chapter 474

"Just stop." She stood up, and the sheet fell away, and she stood there in her ruined skin like a queen looking down on a beggar. "Stop all the pretence. You have lied to me enough. You have told me every story you wanted me to hear. You spin your webs around me, just so I can be your little slave. Your little charity case. Something you can point at and feel good about yourself."

"Tasha, that is not true..."

"Well, I do not need it anymore." Her voice rose, cracking. "I do not need your help anymore. So I am asking you nicely. Can you just leave?"

I stared at her. The girl I had crossed oceans for. The girl I had bled for, lied for, sold pieces of myself for. I stared at her, and something in my chest was quietly dying.

"Listen to me, Tasha." My voice came out low and steady, and I did not recognize it. "It is my duty to take care of you. It is my duty to protect you. And right now, I am going to apply this balm to your wounds. No one has the right to stop me from doing what is best for you." I paused. "Not even you."

I reached for her arm, where the worst of the welts sat, to wipe the dried blood away.

Her hand came up fast and hard, and the slap cracked across my cheek like a gunshot. My head snapped to the side, and the balm flew out of my hand and hit the floor, rolling away into the shadows.

My hand went to my cheek before my mind caught up, and the skin there stung as though she had struck me with something far hotter than her palm. "Tasha. You... you slapped me."

And I remembered every sacrifice that promise had cost me since. All the things I had done. All the people I had slept with, smiling up at men I despised while they used my body, because their whispers in the dark were worth more than my pride. Infiltrating Bryan's operation just to get close enough to pull Tasha out of it.

I remembered the day I learned about the hemovax poison in her system, and how the floor had dropped out from under me when I understood what Bryan had done. The poison was the leash he kept her on. If I snatched her away without the antidote, she would be dead in no time.

I remembered the sleepless nights after that, hunched over a glowing screen until my eyes burned, chasing a cure that did not exist, calling in every favor I had left until there were none. I had found nothing. Not a single lead. Nothing but the sick, helpless knowledge that I could not save her on my own.