Chapter Twenty Three
Mia
I do not expect Mateo to come to my room tonight since he’s already fucked me, and because I get the feeling I’m being punished. I wish he’d tell me what I’m being punished for, but that’s not really his way, so I don’t expect that either.
But he does come to my room.
He doesn’t speak. There’s no small talk. He walks in, rips his belt off, and glowers at me to let me know I should still be wary. I appreciate the warning, I guess, but I still don’t know what I’ve done.
I try to swallow the nervous lump in my throat as he approaches the bed, dropping the last item of his clothing onto the floor. I was messing with my phone before he came in, so I hurry to put it down on the bedside table before he comes at me.
His eyes narrow on the phone.
“I’m getting you a new phone,” he states.
“I don’t need a new phone,” I tell him.
“Yes, you do. I’m taking that one with me when I leave this room tonight.”
Thinking of all the pictures that are not saved to the cloud, I shake my head. “No.”
Now his narrowed gaze swings back to me. “I’m not in the mood for ‘no’ tonight, Mia.”
I lower my gaze, cursing my own tactlessness. “I only meant… I have to back up my stuff first if you want me to switch phones. I have pictures and videos and stuff on this one that I—”
“You can take new pictures and make new videos,” he says, not even letting me finish.
My stomach sinks as I realize why he wants to take my phone. “You don’t want me to have pictures of Vince.”
“You’re still wallowing,” he says, unkindly. “It’s time to move on.”
“You can’t put a time limit on my grief,” I tell him, hugging my knees protectively to my chest.
“Yes, I can.”
“That’s not how this works, Mateo.”
He climbs up on the bed, his eyes never leaving mine. “That is how this works. That’s exactly how this works. And you’re done withholding from me. No more of that.”
“That’s definitely not how that works,” I say, shaking my head. I haven’t been able to withhold from him since he took me to his bedroom tonight. He activated the sexual part of me that’s essentially a slave to his pleasure, but now that my brain has a foot on the pedal, I don’t want to go back to that. Unless he keeps me in a constant sex haze, he can’t keep me in that place. He has to realize that.
“Here’s how it works,” he says. “Take your clothes off and shed your stubbornness, because I’m going to fuck you until you give me your love back. I won’t leave until you do. I don’t care if it takes a week. I don’t care if the world outside this bedroom disappears in a puff of smoke while I’m in here fucking you, Mia. I will not leave your body until you admit you love me again.”
“You can’t force people to love you, Mateo,” I say, frowning at him.
“I can force people to do whatever the fuck I want them to do, Mia. I can force grown men with actual fucking power to do my bidding. I will not be bested by a teenage girl.”
“You already had my love,” I tell him, shaking my head. “You already had everything you want from me. You shouldn’t have thrown it away.”
“I didn’t throw it away. I broke it. I break things. You fix things. You heal. That’s how we work. You’re not Vince, you’re Mia. We aren’t damned to the same fate you two were. You can forgive. You can let go.”
I shake my head, more with regret than stubbornness. “Not of this.”
He looks like he wants to strangle me as he grinds out, “Why not?”
“Because Vince doesn’t get to be happy!” I say that a little more forcefully than I intended, but now that it’s out, I’m rolling downhill from the momentum. “So why should we? You stole from him—not just me, you stole his whole life. He hated all of this. He was 19 fucking years old, Mateo. He never even got to have a life, and you took it, and for what? For me. I ruined his life. I cost him his life. I don’t know how you think I’m getting past that. You can fuck me raw, you can even trigger me with your conniving tricks and make me want to please you, but I’ll always wake back up. I’ll always come back around. I will remember Vince whether you take away his pictures or not. Unless you figure out a way to wipe my memory, this is what it is. This is what you bought. I’m sorry you didn’t get a fucking receipt, but this is it. This is what I can offer you. If that’s good enough, great. If it isn’t… then I don’t know what to tell you.”
Irritation is stamped across every one of his handsome features. “Why do I always want the women who drive me fucking crazy?”
This question is clearly not for me, because I know next to nothing about his past relationships, so I don’t answer. I know he killed someone named Beth and proposed to Meg. That’s the beginning and end of what I know.
“Does Meg drive you crazy?”
“Whose bedroom am I in, Mia?” he asks, like I’m annoying him by being a dumbass.
“Well, I don’t know how your brain works, Mateo. You clearly want Meg since I’m sharing.”
“You can’t handle me full-time,” he states, almost dismissively. “You need a friend.”
Now I frown, but he’s already moving on before I can dig into that. He moves closer, grabbing my ankles to pull me out of my protective stance.
“Why isn’t it enough that I want you? Holding a grudge can’t bring Vince back. It can’t change anything. It will only make us both unhappy.”
“We deserve to be unhappy,” I tell him. “We’ve done terrible, unforgivable things to people we love. We deserve to pay for it.”
“You keep saying ‘we,’” he says, watching me closely. “You didn’t do anything. You begged for mercy. You tried to intervene. You gave him acceptance and love regardless of what he did. Stop holding onto guilt. You don’t deserve to be unhappy.”
“Yes, I do,” I say simply.
“You have to let go of that, Mia. That’s the problem, that right there. That’s why I can’t get anywhere with you.”
I shrug, looking down at my toes. Most of the nail polish has chipped off them, but last time I painted them, Vince was on the couch next to me complaining about the smell. I can’t bring myself to remove that chipped nail polish and put new paint in its place.
He grasps my chin, forcing me to look up at him. “I want that. That love and acceptance you gave to him once—I want that for myself.”
I smile now, a semi-crazy smile, because that’s perfect. “You finally want something you can’t steal. How does it feel?”
“Horrible.”
Nodding, I tell him, “Welcome to everyone else’s world.”
And he’s right. It does make him crazy. There’s something he wants that he can’t have. I won’t give it to him. No matter how many battles he wins, he isn’t winning the war.
He isn’t winning.
And he can’t stand it.
I’m finally starting to get it, I think. I’m finally starting to understand.
So I shake my head, almost apologetically. “You know what… I think how you feel right now, sitting here demanding things of me that you know I could give you, just at a high cost… I think this is how I felt that night. I’m sure you feel it to a lesser extent; you don’t feel as deeply as I do, after all. But our roles have reversed. That night I begged you to give me what I needed, I begged you to make a sacrifice for me, to spare him even though it would make your life harder, but you weren’t willing. And now that’s what you want from me. I could give you the love and acceptance you crave, but I would despise myself for it. I would have to pay too high a price. And that’s the difference between then and now. Then, I would’ve paid any price for you, for your happiness. I loved you, and that’s how I love. I’m a giver. But I’m not a welcome mat. I gave and I gave because I loved you, because I was devoted to you, because it filled me up to satisfy you. That’s not just how I deport myself. I don’t give to everyone like that. I’d be depleted if I did that. Right now, you sitting here asking me to give you what you need, this is you begging me. And now it’s my turn to look you in the face like you don’t matter, and say ‘okay.’ Like you’re nothing to me. Like you did to me that night.”
His jaw locks and he glares at me. “Revenge doesn’t suit you, Mia.”
“This isn’t revenge. It’s justice.”
“Call it what you want, it’s revenge.”
I shake my head. “It’s not. My loyalty was always split between you and Vince, but my desire for you always tipped the scales in your favor. You fucked up. You tipped the scales forever in his favor when you killed him.”
“Bullshit. You’re just being stubborn.”
“I guess we’ll see who’s right.” I finger the locket hanging around my neck. “I’m stuck here, and you’re stuck with me. Welcome to Hell.”
He doesn’t like me realizing I do have power over him.
He hates it.
I don’t especially like it myself; that’s not my thing. I like him having all the power. I like being his cherished plaything. I wish he would’ve just given me the respect I asked for that night. I wish the scales were tipped back in his favor. I wish my loyalty was his, like it was when it shouldn’t have been. But he gave my loyalty to Vince. He made me feel indebted to Vince’s memory. I cost him everything, and I owe him this last tribute. If I drive Mateo crazy for the rest of his goddamn life, that’s what he deserves. And if it tortures me to make him feel that way, that’s what I deserve.
We’re both getting our just desserts, whether we like it or not.