“If you only knew the full story—” Dex began, but Andi didn’t want to listen. She was so angry, but hidden behind that rage was pure pain. It was so raw it made her want to burst. Had he ever thought about the pain he’d caused her? Had he ever imagined himself in her place, betrayed by the one who’d sworn her his love and facing the death she’d spent so many years running from?
“I loved you!” she yelled. Her voice cracked on those horrid words, but she kept going, unable to stop. “I loved you, and you threw me away like some common whore!”
Her heart beat so fast she thought it would explode.
He took a step backward, as if he’d been shoved.
“You have to listen to me, Andi,” Dex begged. His dark eyes were wide, his tattooed arms held out, hands pressed pleadingly together before him.
She hated how handsome he was. Hated the curve of his jaw, the brown of his eyes, the way the starlight spilled across him like a lover’s caress.
She could scarcely stand to look at him.
“I don’t have to do anything,” Andi growled.
She didn’t feel the cool trickle of tears trailing from her eyes, didn’t know there were any tears left to cry until she tasted the saltiness on her lips. She sucked a breath through her gritted teeth. She felt her fists clench, felt the weight of her cuffs begging to swing. To give in to the anger. To sink into that darkness she’d been swallowed by years ago. But as much as she wanted to swing at him, she knew her fists weren’t in control of this fight.
Her words were.
She wanted him to hurt. To feel the soul-deep pain, just as she did.
Physical wounds would heal, but the internal scars never would.
“Do you not understand?” Andi cried out. He looked broken, his constellation tattoos like cracks across his skin. She wanted to shatter him from the inside out. “You were my whole world. You showed me that I could still be loved. When everyone else—an entire planet full of people—hated me so much they wished me dead, even my own parents...I found you. I started to live again. I started to trust. Then I lost you, too, just like all the others. You turned away, just like they did.”
She didn’t care that the tears were now flowing freely, spilling across her metal cheekbones to splatter at her feet. They had been pent up for too long. They needed to be released. “You were a coward. A pathetic, Krev-hungry coward. You failed me when you were the only person I thought never would.”
Her words echoed in the space.
For a second she thought he would turn and leave, too cowardly to listen.
Then Dex crossed the room in three strides, so close to her that she could feel his breath on her face. “I turned you in because you were running from the law! You lied to me about your past, Andi. I did nothing that wasn’t expected of me! My duty as a Guardian was to the welfare of the galaxy, not to some runaway Spectre who’d failed her entire planet! You made the choice to fly that transport ship. It was your hands that crashed it. Your failure that killed Kalee! You ran, Androma.” He laughed, then, a short bark that exploded from his chest. “And now look what you’ve become! The Bloody Baroness!”
“You made me this way,” Andi snarled. “I became a monster of your creation. I killed, and I liked it. And you liked it, too. All those deaths across the galaxy have your name on them, just as much as mine.”
“You’re blaming me for the murders you’ve committed?” He laughed in her face.
“‘You’re amazing when you fight, Androma,’” she said, throwing his past words back at him. “‘You’re unstoppable.’ Every time you saw me take someone down, every job I helped you with, you looked at me with pride. With love.”
They circled each other like predators, blood boiling, bodies shaking with rage as the stars looked on.
“Did you ever think about my side in all of this, Androma?” Dex’s voice cracked suddenly as he ran his fingers through his dark hair. “You may think you know the whole story, but you are so consumed by hate that you only see yourself.”
She ran her palm over her face, feeling the chill of her metal cheekbones as she wiped away the tears. “You are such a hypocrite! Did you ever ask for my side of the story?”
He paused, then said, “Your side of the story doesn’t matter. You sunk a knife into my chest. You stole my ship and left me to die.”
“And I’d do it again, a thousand times,” Andi growled, stepping closer until they were practically touching, until their furious hearts beat as one.
She saw tears in his eyes now, as well. Felt his chest rise and fall as sobs overcame him.
“You are the only woman I have ever loved,” he whispered.
He stepped away, and the space between them felt as distant as the black sky outside.
“If you loved me, why did you betray me?” Andi asked in a whisper.
Dex released a breath. His voice was softer now when he spoke. “There is more to the story than what you think, if you would just listen to me.”
She shook her head. “Not tonight, Dex.”
“If not tonight, then when?”
He was so stubborn it made Andi want to scream.
“I’ve heard enough.”
He rushed toward her again, grabbed her hands in his and squeezed them tight. Forced her to look up at him.
“I didn’t have a choice. When I found out you were a wanted fugitive, I felt like a fool for not realizing it earlier. The way you could fight, the burns on your wrists. How could I not have seen it after the general had blasted your name across the feeds? Godstars, Andi, only a few days had passed when I discovered who you really were, and you’d already wiggled your way into my heart. I was in shock. I knew I had to turn you in, but...I let time go by. I let myself love you, protect you, help you rediscover the strength I always knew you had.”
“And yet you still turned me in,” she said.
“They had my father!”
He barked out the words in one breath. His eyes were wide, like he couldn’t believe he’d actually said them.
Dex had never spoken about his family before, and she’d never pushed the subject. Just as he’d never pushed her for details about her own past.
“The Arcardian Patrolmen took him hostage. The general...all who were loyal to him...they were so furious when you escaped Arcardius before your death sentence could be carried out. I was approached by some of his men. They said that if I didn’t lead them to you, my father would be killed. He was just a mechanic. An innocent man! He hadn’t killed like you had, he hadn’t...” Dex took a deep breath. “They gave me a choice, Andi. I could turn in the woman I loved, whom I’d only spent a year of my life with...or I could watch the man who raised me die at their hands.”
Andi didn’t know what to think, what to believe.
Dex wiped tears from his cheeks as he sunk to his knees before her.
Broken.
Dextro Arez was finally, finally broken. She saw it as plain as day before her, a victory she’d imagined in her heart for years.