____________

Drake

 

 

 

Tonight she was waiting for me in my bedroom. Before I had even closed the door behind me, her voice tremored over my name.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, my stomach already sinking under the weight of premonition.

“I need to go back to Japan.”

Fuck. “No,” I said, a little too quickly.

She bit her lip to keep it from trembling. I hated that she was close to tears. Her pain was my pain. I couldn’t let her emotions manipulate me. My mother used to use tears.

Only the weak allowed themselves to be manipulated. And Drake Blackwell was not a weak man.

I steeled myself, looking at something over her shoulder so she remained just out of focus.

“Drake, my father…my father is dying. I need to go back.”

She knew. It was over. A bomb detonated in my stomach, shrapnel and fire ripping through me. This would ruin everything. Everything.

“How do you know that?” I asked, deflecting, even as I felt the ground underneath my feet shaking.

She ignored my question. “You’ll let me go back, won’t you?”

“You called them behind my back even after I told you not to. How did you get hold of a phone?”

“My father is dying and all you can say−”

“My father is dead. Fathers die.”

The gasp that ripped from her mouth felt like it had torn off me. “You can’t be this cruel. Please, let me go. I need to say goodbye.”

She’s going to leave me. She wants to leave me.

“I told you I was keeping an eye on things back in Japan. I told you I’d take care of it.”

“You lied,” she yelled. “My father is dying and you said nothing to me.”

“I was trying to protect you!”

“By keeping it from me? When would you have told me? After the funeral?”

If I let her leave, she will never return.

If I lose her, I will die.

I. Will. Die.

Like he did. Just like him. You’re just like him. Like father, like son.

This all-too familiar voice rose unbidden this time, choking me, throbbing in my ears like my heartbeat, rattling in my brain until I thought I would go mad.

I felt my body ice up in defense until the blood froze over in my veins and my words came out like frost. “I was trying to figure out how to break the news to you.”

“You’re lying. You’re lying to me.” Her arms thrashed out in the air like she was trying to punch my shadow, her voice a mere screech. “You don’t want me to go anywhere or talk to anyone.”

“What garbage.”

“You won’t let me out of this house. You won’t let me have friends. I’m a prisoner here. A fucking prisoner.”

“Calm down, Noriko.”

“Calm down? Calm the fuck down?” She grabbed a vase and threw it at me, a scream tearing from her lungs. “Is this calm enough for you, you son of a bitch?”

It was a wild shot. I moved my head to the side and it flew right past me. It had zero chance of hitting me. But when the vase smashed against the wall, it buried the rest of the emotions left within me. I was now totally cold. I glared at Noriko shaking like a leaf, her mouth distorting into an ugly clownish sneer.

“Please,” she threw herself at my feet. “Let me see him. Please, I’m begging you.”

“No.”

“You can’t do this.” She clawed at my pant leg, her voice filled with disbelief. “You have to let me say goodbye to my father.” The tears streaming down her cheeks were cutting through my shields.

I had to stay strong. I had to hold us together. If I gave in to her, we crumbled.

I crumbled.

I wrapped more steel around my heart until I was stiff and straight from it. My voice was harder to keep steady. “Stay.”

Her tears sparkled with fury, with hatred. She launched herself back onto her feet, backing away from me. “Fuck you. I’m going anyway.”

I’m going anyway.

Something inside me cracked beneath my fortress walls. Panic overtook all thought.

I could not let her leave me.

I grabbed her arm and yanked her flush against my body. Even furious at her, my body burst into flames at her nearness. My gaze dropped to her lips, parted and pink, breath heaving. God, it felt like forever since I’d kissed her lips. My wife. My lips. I leaned in to take them.

Her palm smacked against my cheek, sharp pain radiating through my face. “Let go of me, you monster.”

“Monster? Monster?” I grabbed her with both hands and shook her.

“You’re a selfish, heartless beast.” She beat my chest, emphasizing each hateful word.

The memory of her betrayal—her birth control pills—flooded my body with fury. “And you’re a lying, manipulative bitch. I guess we deserve each other.”

She screamed in my face and tried to push me away. I was much stronger than she was. I tightened my grip until she was wincing in pain.

A part of me was screaming, stop it, you’re hurting her!

Part of me wanted to hurt her for all the pain she had caused me. An eye for an eye. A strip of your heart for all of the pieces you have torn off mine.

The biggest part of me was terrified—so terrified I could barely think. All I could hear in my head was her threat.

I’m going anyway.

I’m going anyway.

I’m going anyway.

She was going to leave me. She couldn’t fucking leave me.

I pulled her across the floor, out of my room and towards her bedroom, ignoring her kicking and screaming for me to let go of her, ignoring her feeble attempts to grab onto the doorframe. Fear bubbled across my skin in a simmer, making my brain full of cotton.

She was going to leave me.

She couldn’t leave me. I wouldn’t let her. I just needed to keep her here until I could fix this.

I thrust her into her bedroom. She backed away from me, her eyes wild, glancing all around her.

I took the small key from the inside of her lock. “You give me no choice.” I shut the door behind me and locked it, my heart lurching into my throat as her little body slammed against the other side of it.

The door vibrated as I leaned my palm against it, clutching the door without purchase, a raw, silent sob scraping itself around the insides of my chest at her screams of anguish. Each heartbeat of mine alternated between two thoughts.

You hurt me, too, Noriko.

And,

I can’t lose you.