He doesn’t say a word to me as he bandages my wrist, he doesn’t even look at me with pity. He just does his job then walks out, leaving me in my white dress on a very white floor stained with my blood. It was the fastest and quickest solution. But maybe not one of the brightest decisions I’ve ever made. I manage to stand, picking up my bag with my other hand and walking to the door.

Ryken’s sitting at the top of the stairs when I walk out of his door. His head down low and not saying a word. He knows I’m here, my heels are a giveaway and hard to miss.

“Why would you do that, Barbie?”

Shaking my head, I have no words to answer him. It was a stupid move.

“Maybe it would be better to have the problem taken away. My life is good now, Ryken, and soon it’s about to become my worst nightmare. All because I didn’t listen to you one night.” My face is wet with tears. He stands, not stopping until he reaches me and slams my body to his, wrapping his arm around my waist.

“You aren’t a problem, but this one I can’t fix. I’ve tried to fix it, Barbie, so many fucking times I’ve tried.”

I believe him. Every word he’s just said, I believe him. He wouldn’t let anyone take me without trying everything he could possibly try. Even with a year between us, I still know that much. Because when I look into his eyes, he’s still the same man that looks back at me like I’m more than who I’m meant to be. To him, I’m more than a girl that couldn’t afford a private school. More than a girl who was raised by a mother who never cared. More than the girl who was raised in a trailer.

Where Stiles looked at me as if he alone could fix me. The girl that he could help somehow. I didn’t want help from anyone, or I would have asked. That’s one of the main reasons it ended between us. Stiles couldn’t make me what I didn’t want to become.

My dreams were never to become a lawyer or some fancy designer. No, mine were simple. Easy. Something that made me happy and comfortable. I had a clientele that I loved. Clientele that liked to only see me. They told me all their problems, confided in me when they had no one else. And I loved every minute of it.

And now my world was being ripped away because I tried to save a girl who was destined for nowhere anyway. I wanted more for her. I wanted to save her because I had no one to save me at her age. Failing was what happened, and now the consequences for my actions were to be paid in full.

There was no escaping it.

Ryken knows it, so I must as well.

If Ryken Lord, King of the underworld can’t stop this from happening, I don’t have a hope in hell to save my sorry ass. And no one else is going to fight for me. He already tried that, and in return, he paid his price, too.

Breathing him is my only option. Because if I stop, I will crash and I already tried to do that. He won’t let me.

“I’m going to disappear, and no one will miss me,” I say more to myself as he holds me. How can someone else’s hands hold you up when all you want to do is fall. He holds me for a good minute, before he pulls back, both hands now on my face as he looks at me. My wrist is aching, but I don’t care about that either.

Soon, my life problems are going to be big.

A cut wrist won’t matter in the grand scheme of things.

“What will they do with me?” I ask. The tears have stopped now. His finger brushes my cheek as he looks at me to answer. His eyes are dark again, the same way they were that day at school. The years have been good to his body, maybe not so much to his mind.

“You should sit down.” He goes to move his hands away from my face, but I hold him to me. Shaking my head. “Okay.” He nods his head, staying where he is, touching me. I need him to be physical with me, so I don’t think I’m having a nightmare.

Closing my eyes my hands stay on him. “Tell me. Please.”

“He won’t rape you. That’s what you want to know, isn’t it? That he won’t touch you?”

Relief floods through me as I nod my head. “They won’t touch me?”

His eyes squint as he looks at me, and I know what he’s about to say isn’t going to be easy. “He may do other things to you, Barbie. Some things I couldn’t keep off the table. Rape was the only guarantee I could get.”

My hands drop from him, and I take a step back, breaking contact with him. “You only came back to tell me this, didn’t you?”

He nods his head in confirmation.

“When do you leave?”

“The day you do.”

My heart cracks.

“She’s waiting for you. Isn’t she?”

His head nods, and if my heart weren’t already shattered, it would be now.

“You love both of us?” I ask, knowing the answer already.

“I do, but both in completely different ways.”

My eyes are heavy, as well as my heart.

“I should leave, and you should go back to her,” I say, shaking my head and looking around for my handbag.

“I don’t want to. Here and now is where I belong. With you, Barbie.”

“I can’t be that girl again. I promised myself I wouldn’t be that girl, Ryken. Why are you trying to make me be her?”

When I look up to him, he looks like I slapped him. “You aren’t that girl. I just happen to be that guy.”

“You don’t have to be. You choose her. Stay choosing her.”

Stepping around him, I go to the door. But he stops me with his hands. It feels like a never-ending game of pull and be pulled. We are continually yanking at each other, but somehow we never stick. We somehow come undone and go the wrong way, when we should just try to glue ourselves to the very floor we stand on together.

“Choosing you was what I wanted, though.” His hand burns my arm like it’s on fire.

“Boss.” We both turn to Quinn standing there watching us. He doesn’t judge, even though he just saw my crazy. He doesn’t even look at me.

“Not now, Quinn.” Ryken turns back to look at me, but Quinn doesn’t move.

“Boss, they’ve arrived early. You no longer have two days. Tomorrow they will collect her.”

My gasp is loud, and I almost fall to the floor. Managing to get my arm free, I run out the front door and straight to my car, pulling it open. Before I can pull away, he’s in it next to me.

“Get out.” He shakes his head, pulling on the seatbelt.

“Take me there. Show me what you created.” He knows where I’m going without even asking.

Starting the car with shaky hands, we drive in silence until I pull up out front of my small little shop.

Ryken looks at it smirks. “It’s very... Barbie.”

My smirk starts then stops when I realize why I’m here. It isn’t to play nice. It’s to sort it out. If I couldn’t end my own life, the least I can do is make sure everything I own, love, which is right here, stays safe for when I return.

“I will be coming back, won't I?”

He looks to the ground as I open the door, then up to me. “That’s the plan.”

Shaking my head, I lead him in. “Why don’t you sound convinced?”

He leans on my counter watching me. “You won’t be the same person you are now, Barbie. This life, it changes you. It changed me.”

I can see the shift in him. He’s different, yet he’s still the same.

“What will happen when I don’t love you anymore, Ryken? That’s a possibility. I would never have to deal with this if it wasn’t for you. For meeting you.”

Pain flashes in his eyes. “It would make both our lives easier if you didn’t love me. Because me loving you isn’t fucking going anywhere. Believe me, I’ve tried.”

Stepping around the counter and shutting the front door, I place my hands on his hips. Looking up at him. “Tell me you love me.”

He grips me like I’m his. And I guess, at this moment, we can believe that. No one is here to tell us differently.

“I fucking love you, Barbie.”

I nod my head because I believe it. Then I stand on my tippy toes and touch my lips to his. He doesn’t waste any time as he picks me up, knocking everything I have off the counter and spreading my legs as he steps between them. His hands are careful not to touch my wrist as his hand comes between my legs, pulling in one swift movement removing my panties.

His mouth leaves mine, I take a deep breath because he isn’t stealing them anymore.

“I love you, Barbie.”

Then he’s down, down on his hands and knees. His mouth touches me there, right on that perfect spot with his tongue. The circles, he flicks his tongue and has me bending backward, knocking whatever else was on the countertop off.

His hands grip me, keeping me in place, so when I can’t hold back a second longer my back hits the desk. I still stay in the same spot as I come. He doesn’t let me breathe, though. He’s up straight away and sliding into me.

Pulling myself up on him, our bodies slam into each other, and his hand somehow finds my hair, yet again. He has a thing with pulling it, holding it, and keeping me exactly where he needs me. It’s fucking hot and everything he needs.

A simple thought pops into my head, ‘What if he fucks her this way.’ With this much passion. Is that why she can’t walk away? It’s mostly my reason. He sucks what’s left of my soul from my body as he takes me. And I’m like that flower, you know the one, a tulip, that closes at night time and opens during the day. It’s like that, when he isn’t here, I’m closed, but when he is, I’m open and ready to give him what he needs.

Like a flower that needs water, I need Ryken.

He knows it, I know it.

We both don’t want to admit to it.

Ryken Lord is my daytime Tulip, while I’m his night-time siren.

His head falls onto my stomach, as I lay back trying to catch my breath. He’s all over me, and now my shop is an utter mess. Sitting back up, I pull him up with me, and he doesn’t make an effort to move. He just looks at me with those dark eyes that hold his own demons. Is it even possible for it to now be darker than it was when he left? He still doesn’t hide them from me. It’s still there for me to see.

“I live upstairs,” I tell him, pointing to the door that’s locked. His eyebrows raise. And I hope that the rest of the night can be like this. Us. Utterly lost in each other before there will never be an us again.

He pulls out of me then pulls my dress down as he turns me to pick me up like a bride. That thought hurts because it’s something I will never be. It doesn’t stop him, though, as we get to the steps and then up to my room. He ravishes me the only way he knows how.

Taking bits of me, piece by piece.