Chapter 6: WE BOTH WENT COMPLETELY STILL
Chapter 6
Lumi
Sienna.
"I know you can hear me but you don’t want to reply," she said, her voice careful and measured. "I just wanted to apologize for what happened. You haven’t been picking my calls."
No, I hadn’t. Because there was nothing there. No version of an apology that could sit between us and mean anything real.
But I didn’t hang up. Something in me, some stubborn, curious part of me, made me hold the phone against my ear and listened. I knew it was foolish but I did it anyway.
"Whatever happened between me and Callum wasn’t planned," she continued. "It was just fate." I let out a short, sharp breath of disbelief through my nose.
Fate. She was calling it fate. They both cheated on me for years, that had nothing to do with faith.
Was it faith that asked him to propose even when he knew she was his mate? I think it was time to end the call.
My hands hoovered over the screen, then her heard her say something.
"Why are you so bitter about it?" she asked in a tone I’ve never heard from her before. "You don’t have to be bitter." I stared at the wall in front of me.
Did she just call me bitter?
She had been my best friend for years but had also slept and got pregnant for my husband. And made me adopt her child and I was the bitter one because I didn’t let them lie to my face again?
I couldn’t believe my hears.
"That’s probably why no man wants you," she said, and her tone had dropped into something sharper, something with edges. "That disgusting attitude of yours." I raised a brow.
"You really do have guts, Sienna," I said quietly. "But I won’t say anything to you. There’s nothing to say. You’re not worth a single drop of my saliva." I said and ended the call.
I set the phone down on the table and pressed both hands flat against the surface and breathed slowly through my nose slowly.
I wasn’t going to let her words find the soft places inside me and settle there.
I could already feel the headache beginning, a slow, dull pressure building behind my eyes. I closed them and counted my breathing.
I was still doing that when I heard the low, rumbling, familiar sound of a bike pulling up slow outside the house.
No. Not now. God please. Not today, not right now, not while the echo of Sienna’s voice was still sitting in my chest and my head was starting to pound.
I stood up and went to the door before he could knock, to dismiss him as I always did.
I opened the door, he was already on the path. He was putting on a black leather trousers and jacket that shows off his chest.
Why wouldn’t he just put on something inside, before wearing the jacket. Must he dress half naked?
"I don’t need a babysitter." I said without immediately, he nodded once and turned as if to go.
But then he paused for one moment, turned around and walked past me through the open door into the house like I hadn’t spoken at all.
I stood in the doorway surprised and not moving as I stared at the space he had just walked through.
Then I turned around and followed him into the living room and found him sitting on Neve’s sofa, one arm resting on the back of it, long legs stretched out in front of him, entirely relaxed, like he owned the property and planned to stay.
"What are you doing?" I asked but he didn’t respond.
Something sharp moved through me. "I asked what you’re doing." He looked around the room, then back at me with the same flat expression he had worn every single day this week.
"What does it look like? Sitting on my sister’s couch." I stared at him petrified.
"I know this is your sister’s house, but she’s not here. So the house is mine right now and that means you need my permission to get in. I’ll need you to leave because you’re not welcome." I said in the calmest tone I could manage but he didn’t bulge. He only stared around like I didn’t just ask him to leave.
I didn’t have the strength for this today. I didn’t have the patience for whatever this was, this performance he had decided to put on while my head pounded.
"I don’t have the strength for this," I said flatly. "I’m not in the mood for your childish behaviour." Something shifted in his face.
I knew I’d hit a nerve. Nothing hurts a Lycan ego more than calling him childish. But I didn’t care, he asked for whatever I gave to him when he came into this apartment without my permission.
He tilted his head and gave a slow, cocky smile that didn’t reach anywhere near his eyes.
"At least I’m not a bitter adult." My whole world collapsed at him words, the hand and breathe froze.
Bitter. Twice in one morning. First her, now him.
I didn’t decide to move. I wasn’t thinking clearly enough to decide anything.
One moment the word was still ringing in my ears, the next my hand was already in motion and it landed across his cheek with a sharp, clean sound that rang through the whole room.
Smack.
We both went completely still.
The silence after it was the loudest thing I had ever heard.
