His demeanor cool and aloof, he was controlled, dominant, and so very intense that sometimes I had to look away from him just so my heart didn’t shatter.
I was as familiar with that sixteen-year-old Ronan as I was with the man in front of me now.
But he was also very different. Not even his thick, dark eyelashes that framed his magnificent eyes could soften the sharp features that had become his impossibly rugged, handsome face.
Just like all those years ago, he still made me feel both weak with need to be near him and in awe of his presence. But now, the man that was Ronan elicited a new feeling. Heated blood and frenzied nerves swirled so low in my belly, I wanted to part my legs for him. I wanted to bring him close in ways that we’d never shared. I wanted it so bad, I ached for it like I was sick.
Forcing my heart rate to slow, feigning an indifference I had never felt around him, I apologized. “I’m sorry. That was rude.”
His gaze gripping my soul, his eyes holding me captive, he didn’t respond.
Blushing, I felt seventeen again. “May I start over?” Today, yesterday, a decade ago?
Barely a breath of movement, he tipped his chin.
Traitorous hope surged, and heat bloomed across my cheeks. “Hi.”
He stepped forward.
The gasp slipped through my parted lips as he closed the space between us and filled it with ocean breezes and soapy musk.
He looked down at me with his heavenly eyes, and his thick, soft black hair fell over his forehead.
I didn’t think.
I reached up and brushed the silky strands back. But then I couldn’t stop myself. My hand curled into his hair, and a plea whispered from my heart. “Ronan, please.”
Swift, dominant, he gripped my wrist. “Stop.”
Frozen in his commanding grip, I didn’t move. Fearful a single breath would shatter our precarious closeness, I didn’t even breathe.
Low, resonant, his voice curled around my aching need. “You have no idea what you’re asking for.”
I did. I was asking for everything. I was asking for this angry, complex, beautiful man to hold me accountable. I wanted all of his rage, passion and hurt. I wanted his emotions. I wanted to take them and absorb it and then finally, selfishly, I wanted him to forgive me.
Standing on an edge as sure as I stood twenty stories above the deep ocean below us, I opened my mouth and pleaded. “Hurt me like I hurt you.”
Before either of us had drawn our next breaths, my wrist was pinned behind my back and he was gripping my hair at my nape, using his hold to force my head back.
Hovering a fraction above my mouth, he asked the last thing I was expecting, but the one thing I should’ve been prepared for. “How should I betray you, Sanaa?”
From his punishing grip on my hair, from the way his words stabbed my heart, my eyes welled. “I don’t know.” His hard body leaning into mine, there was no room for lies, but even now I couldn’t speak the truth. I couldn’t tell him an eye for an eye. I couldn’t tell him to use another woman in front of me. I couldn’t give him permission to do to me what I had done to him.
Pressing my wrist into my lower back, pushing my body into his, his hard length grew against my abdomen as if he desired me, but then his words spit hateful anger. “Should I fuck one of your cousins? Someone who works for you? Should I bring a woman in off the street and touch her naked body in front of you?”
The knife twisted in my chest. “I-I didn’t sleep with Vance.”
“Did he see this body naked? Did you let him covet what was mine? Do you think it’s any less of a betrayal because he didn’t take your virginity before I walked in?”
Hurt dripped down my face. “I—”
“You think fucking another woman in front of you will even the score? I should betray my own heart to appease your guilt?”
The knife drove all the way in, and I shattered just like I did ten years ago. “Ronan, please, I didn’t know.”
“I was going to make you my wife.” His grip tightened. “You knew that.” Fury turned his eyes the color of the angry ocean outside. “I was going to give you everything I had.”
“Please,” I wept.
“Please what, Sanaa?”
Oh, sweet mercy. “Don’t call me that.” He never called me by my given name, not like this. Not when he was touching me, even if it was in anger. Not when it was just the two of us. I was his Songbird. I had always been his Songbird.
“What should I call you?” Deathly quiet, darkly ominous, he didn’t ask the question, he dared me to answer it.
No way to turn back, and no way to move forward, I did the only thing I could.
“Songbird,” I whispered.
Instantly releasing her, I stepped back.
Songbird.
She didn’t deserve for me to call her that. My Songbird didn’t lie to me. My Songbird didn’t let my twin put his hands on her. My Songbird didn’t play games.
Ignoring the bullshit in my head, I cut all emotion from my tone. “When were you going to tell me it’s Abernathy?”
“I…” Dropping her gaze, swiping at her tears, she didn’t pretend to be surprised. “Vance said you didn’t need to know.”
Locking down everything, I didn’t react. “Because?”
She reached up to smooth her hair. It was a gesture I’d seen her do a thousand times. She wasn’t vain. She didn’t know her own beauty, and she never used to worry over her dress or makeup. But her hair she’d always been cognizant of. Except halfway through the gesture of her hand grasping her own locks, she stopped and pulled her arms in instead.
Then she spoke how she used to speak to me—with thoughts spilling rapid-fire out of her mouth as she bled her accented words together.
“I don’t even know anymore. This is all crazy. That sick man is out there somewhere, wanting to blow us all up, and it’s my fault. Everything is my fault. Every single thing that’s happened is because of my actions, because of what I did. I was foolish and didn’t understand what I wanted back then, what I already had. Except now that I do, now that I desperately want what I can’t have anymore, it’s too late. I don’t know how to fix any of this. I can’t make you love me again. I can’t undo the past.” She gripped her arms tighter, and her voice dropped to a whisper. “You killed a man because of me. I can’t fix that.”
My muscles stilled, but the realization hit with the force of a blast wave.
This wasn’t about what I’d done.
This wasn’t about her mistake.
This was about what I hadn’t done.
I hated my brother. I hated his selfish arrogance and competitiveness. He wasn’t a brother. He was an adversary who wanted everything I’d ever had. He took the girl I lost my virginity to. He fucked the girlfriend I had before Sanaa, and he’d allowed Sanaa to think he was me. My clothes, my grades, my Songbird, my fucking T-shirt that night, anything he’d ever wanted, he took.
Sanaa was the straw that made me snap, but Vance wasn’t the problem.
I was.
I’d given him every opportunity to fuck me over, and I’d never said a goddamn word. That night ten years ago was the culmination. I’d walked away from my own damn actions.