When she notices me, she releases the straw in her mouth. “Oh, Knox. What are you doing here?”
“Have you seen Jane?” Usually, I try to be around here as little as possible, mainly because Anastasia likes to keep everything a secret.
But fuck that, she was never my dirty little secret.
Gwen narrows her eyes. “Why?”
“You don’t need to know.”
“Of course, I do. Don’t think I haven’t noticed you roaming around her, trying to intimidate her and stuff.” She stands up and places a hand on her hip, her drink clutched tightly in the other hand. “I protect my friends, you know.”
“And you’ll do that with a milkshake? I suppose this is the time I should act scared?”
“Not with a milkshake. I’ll tell Nate and he’ll fire you.”
“He can’t fire me, Gwen. I’m a junior partner, so he’ll have to make the board agree first.”
“Then he’ll just do that.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Can you just not bully the only female friend I’ve ever had?”
There’s desperation in her tone that makes me pause my arseholish remarks. Gwen might as well be Anastasia’s only friend, too.
She’s that lonely and used to acting solo.
“I’m not bullying her, Gwen.” My voice softens a little.
“How can I be sure?”
“Because I like her.”
We both freeze at that, me more than her, because what the fuck am I saying?
“Ohhhh.” She grins. “That sneak Jane never told me. You must be the friend she’s staying with these days.”
So I’ve become a fucking friend now?
“I am. Now, can you tell me where she is?”
“She took her laptop and went to the fourth floor. Apparently, there’s a place she can focus there. I haven’t been to it, but Jane says…”
I’m striding out before she can finish her sentence.
“You’re welcome!” Gwen shouts behind me.
I don’t focus on her, because I’m on a mission to get to Anastasia. She must be in the supply room.
Our room at the firm.
No idea why that fills me with a strange type of energy.
The moment I arrive, I barge inside and pause in the doorway. Soft light bathes the room, which is different from when we’re usually here.
And the reason for the change punches me right across the face when I find Anastasia sitting between someone’s legs, unbuttoning his shirt.
Someone.
Not me.
Someone else.
As in, another fucking man who has his hand on her arm.
The man is Daniel and he’s touching what’s fucking mine.
My vision turns pure bloody red.
Red like I’ve never experienced.
Red like I’ve never seen before.
Something inside me crashes, splinters, and blasts into a million fucking pieces.
And in the midst of the blinding, searing pain, only one thought remains.
The need to fucking hurt.
32
ANASTASIA
“What the fuck is going on?”
There’s a clipped quality to his voice. The voice that I would recognize anywhere. The voice that’s been haunting my reality and my nightmares.
I raise my head slowly, my throat drying, and my skin suddenly turns freezing cold. The air thickens with suffocating tension and my breaths become deeper but shorter, like none of it is reaching my lungs.
And I don’t think it’s only due to the lack of air or his rough, savage voice. It’s his entire presence. The tightness in his shoulders, the clenching of his jaw, the bulging veins in his neck.
Mostly, it’s the light slowly but surely leaving his golden eyes. The light I always found refuge in. The light that anchored me when I needed something to lean on.
It’s gone now.
What’s left behind is worse than rage or even anger.
It’s nothingness. A bottomless black hole that has no end in sight.
Daniel pushes me away and I scramble to my feet as he stands up, the first buttons of his shirt still undone.
He carefully walks up to Knox. “Mate—”
Whatever he was going to say is cut off when Knox drives his fist into his face with a force that makes me gasp.
Daniel reels backward, cradling his nose with both hands. When he checks his palms, I lean over and startle when I see droplets of blood. “The fuck, Knox? Not the face, you bloody wanker!”
As if not hearing a word he said, Knox lunges forward, probably about to finish what he started. I don’t know how I do it, how I get the courage to jump forward.
Usually, I don’t get involved. I’m neither a pacifier nor a shit-stirrer. I just stay in the background, watching with my mouth shut.
But I think that part was purged out of me when I started becoming Jane. When my life took a sharp dive in a direction I don’t recognize.
The old Anastasia would’ve never gotten involved in fights, but the new me doesn’t think twice as I slide in front of Daniel, flinging my arms wide.
Knox stops mid-punch, his fist still raised in the air, and he’s breathing harshly through his nostrils, uncontrollably even. “Step away.”
“No,” I whisper.
“Step the fuck away.”
“No! Daniel has nothing to do with this. I was the one who asked him to join me here. I was the one who came on to him, so if you want to punch someone, punch me.”
“No one came on to anyone…” Daniel starts.
“I did. I wanted him,” I say firmly to Knox’s face, despite feeling something splinter to a million pieces inside me.
I feel bad for using Daniel and putting him in this position without asking him about it first, but this is the only chance I have.
Knox’s fist clenches until the veins on the back of his hand pop, and just when I think he’ll punch or strangle me, he lets his hand drop to his side.
Even though it’s still balled in a tight grip.
We’re both breathing heavily, his skyrocketing adrenaline rubbing off mine, his anger scratching on my fragile emotions.
He grabs me by the arm, his fingers leaving bruising marks on my skin as he hauls me closer to him. “I don’t want to deal with you right now, so fucking disappear.”
“Why? So you can beat Daniel up?”
“That’s none of your fucking business, and stop taking his side in front of me before I drive my fist into his windpipe and end his motherfucking life.”
“Ouch,” Daniel says from behind me. “And I’m still over here, bleeding, thanks so much for asking, everyone.”
“You shut the fuck up. I’ll be with you in a second,” Knox enunciates from between gritted teeth before narrowing his eyes on me. “And, you. Go.”
“No. You have no right to do this. I already broke up with you.”
He grinds his back teeth together, then drags in a long inhale. “I never fucking agreed to that.”
“That doesn’t mean it isn’t true.”
“That’s exactly what it fucking means.” He shakes me by my arm, his voice becoming guttural and asphyxiating. “You’re mine, and no one touches what’s mine. You don’t let anyone put their hands on you or it’ll be the last time they touch anything.”
My breath hitches and it’s not only due to the raw possessiveness in his tone, or that his heat nearly melts me. It’s that I feel his words instead of merely hearing them.
They sneak beneath my skin and flow into my bloodstream faster and thicker than blood. I’m speechless in the wake of their intensity.
Completely and utterly helpless.
His fingers dig further into my skin as if driving the point home. “I mean it, so don’t make me act on it.”
“I also mean it. We’re over.” I sound calm and composed, even though a war is bursting through my limbs, destroying me from the inside out.
“Anastasia…” The thickness in his voice nearly makes me crumble.
I’m so weak for him, I realize. So damn helpless in front of these golden eyes that hold the world in their depths. A world I recognize myself in. A world I never wanted to leave.
Every part of me is urging me to explain, to throw myself in his arms and cry.
But that will only hurt him.
And me.
“Let me go,” I murmur.
“Not in this fucking lifetime.”
“Let me go, Knox. Just let me go!” I’m two seconds away from crying, from ruining the fragile fa?ade I’ve been wearing since he came in.
“Not going to happen.”