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lifts one large, tan hand and cups my face so, so gently, I could be glass. “I do. I feel completely proprietary of you. You’re mine. I’m not letting you go.”
    “You said
no
to me,” I breathe, blazing with hurt inside. “For months and months. I was dying for you. I was going crazy. I . . . came . . . like a fucking idiot! On your fucking leg! You withheld yourself from me until I was . . . dying a little inside with wanting you. You’ve got more willpower than Zeus! But the first women they bring to your door . . . the moment I’m gone, the first whores they happened to bring you . . .”
    His smile remains on his face, but the light in his eyes has dimmed, and now there’s a fierce intensity in his stare. “What would you have done if you were here? Stopped it?”
    “Yes!”
    “But where were you?”
    My breath comes in jerks.
    He lowers his head and looks deep into my eyes, now curious. “Where were you, Brooke?” One big, warm hand curls around my throat, and he strokes his thumb across my pulse point.
    “I was broken,” I cry in a mix of anger and pain. “You broke me.”
    “No. You. Your letter. Broke me.” The laughter has faded from his gaze as he runs the pad of his thumb up my throat then runs it, lovingly, along the curve of my jaw then finally trails it, like a feather, softly across my lips. “What does it matter if I had to kiss a thousand lips to forget these?”
    There’s a knock on the door, but our warring energies are locked like missiles on their targets. He’s too busy caging me in with his arms, and I’m too busy having my heart broken inside me, loathing that
I’m
the actual wielder of the axe, because we’d broken up. I know he needs sex when he’s manic. I know I left. I had no right to Remington or anything he did or said.
    So I broke my own heart when I left, and now the reality of what happened when I left is coming back and continuing to break it. And here I am, with a huge lump in my throat and exhaling as hard as a fire-breathing dragon.
    He eases back to open the door and pull inside one of the suitcases a bellman is standing there with. As I try to pass, he grabs the back of my shirt and says, “Come here, settle down now.”
    I push his hand away and don’t know if I want to let him settle me down or not. I’m being irrational. I broke up. I left. The one I’m angry with right now, the one I want to hit right now, is
me
. My insides wrench with pain as we hold each other’s gaze. I wipe a tear as I head to the open door, where Remington continues pulling the rest of our things inside.
    I
know
I caused all this. Because I thought I was strong and had tried to protect myself, and so I hurt me, and I hurt him and a whole shitload of people, because I was
strong
and thought I could protect him and my sister—and I fucked everyone instead. But I’m so wounded inside, I just want to lock myself up somewhere and have a good, long cry. I imagine the glittery whores coming into this hotel room when he wasn’t even in his full senses, and I know I’m going to vomit.
    I tell the bellman, “Thank you. Would you send this duffel with that other suitcase to the other room?”
    The guy pushes the cart back toward the elevator bank and nods.
    “Where are you going?” Remington asks as I step into the hallway.
    I drag in a breath and turn. “I want to sleep with Diane tonight. I don’t feel so well and I’d rather we talk about it when I . . . when I . . . am
settled down
,” I say with a closed throat.
    He laughs. “You can’t be serious.”
    When I go over to the elevator and press the CALL button, his laughter quickly fades.
    When I board with the bellman, I’m holding it in, my vomit and my tears. The young guy smiles at me and asks, “First time at this hotel?”
    I nod and swallow.
    As soon as I arrive at Diane’s room, I burst out crying. She brings the suitcases inside and shuts the door. “Brooke, I didn’t mean to cause trouble! I thought you