Break Me (Brayshaw High #5)(118)

I do, my body trembling with more than I can name when the pads of my fingers skate across slightly raised skin. I move her hair aside, and she tips her head, granting me a better look at the scar.

It’s at a slight angle and spans maybe three inches. It’s not very wide, and isn’t raised all that much, but it’s there.

“Tell me what happened,” I murmur.

“My dad tried to kill me, and I tried to let him,” she admits.

My eyes slide to hers and my body slumps into hers.

“If Bass hadn’t gotten home when he did, he would have. My brother jumped in front of me. The bullet shot across the side of my head and wedged into the muscle of his shoulder. He fell back, and my dad came forward. He hit me with the barrel, three times is all I remember, but I was told it was five.”

I clench my teeth, flexing my jaw as I stare at the most perfect fucking thing I’ve ever seen, touched. Been in the fucking presence of.

Hurt by a man she should have been able to trust.

By a man who was supposed to love her.

And by me, a man who does.

Fuck.

“He cracked my skull. I was in the hospital for a few weeks, couldn’t see at all for the first nine days,” she admits. “I have optic nerve damage and it will never go away. It causes blind spells. We learned that when my anxiety is high, or I get worried or scared or emotionally overloaded, it happens. My blood pumps too quickly, inflaming the eye, and I lose clarity... or sight completely.”

“Back at your aunt’s, when I found you sleeping outside, you freaked when you woke up...” I remember.

She nods, her eyes softening. “When I opened my eyes, all I saw was darkness, and I thought my sight was gone. I didn’t realize I fell asleep out there.” She grips my cheeks.

All the heavy blinking, the red, swollenness...

“Royce, at the school, I saw you losing control and started to panic. Your brothers tried to keep me away, they knew what might happen, but I didn’t listen. All I saw was you losing yourself. I got free and was going to try to stop you before things got worse.” She pauses, deep creasing framing her face. “I lost sight and tripped. Baby, you didn’t swing and hit me,” she whispers. “I fell forward and right when you flung your hand back. I fell into it.”

My breath comes out in a hard, panted, huff.

“You were crazed and angry, all you understood was your hand whipped around and you saw me slam to the floor, but it wasn’t your fault. I fell.” Tears fill her eyes and I want to wipe them away.

I never want them clouded from me, changed or—

Okay, I’m a selfish prick.

I want her eyes to fall on me, smile at me, glare at me, even if that means absolutely nothing and no one else. If there’s only one person in the world she can see, I need it to be me.

I swallow, dropping my head to hers, and she pulls in a full breath.

“I went to my place today, the place I took you, by the water,” I tell her. “There were people there.”

Her lips pull in and she waits.

“I lied to you,” I rasp. “I know we’re past that day, but I need you to know it was special to me, but I freaked out, panicked like a bitch when I realized I gave you a piece of me I’d never given anyone, that I let you in without consent. So, I invited people there to try to bury it, to downplay what you do to me, and now it’s ruined.”

My eyes open, locking with hers, and I case her face in with my palms. “That’s what I do to special things, I ruin them.”

Broken and pained, she whispers, “Royce—”

“Don’t let me ruin you. I’m not good.”

Her gaze is troubled but clear and sure.

“I’m not and you know it.” I trace over her cheekbone and my body warms.

A long quiet pause stretches between us, and my knuckle finds its way beneath her jaw, bringing those eyes back to me, where they belong.

I tip my head, gliding my thumb along her bottom lip.

She sighs, leaning into my touch with a long, gentle blink, and my muscles tighten with emotions I can’t begin to name but ain’t mad at. Not right now.

I want to feel all she can do to me. I need to.

She pushes closer and my pulse climbs. “I told you the day I met you, Playboy.” Her voice is a low murmur, her chin lifted and lips as close as she can fuckin’ get ‘em. “I’m so sick of good and I don’t want calm. I want a hurricane. I need a nightmare and someone to hold my hand through the darkness that follows. I want raw realness and a catastrophic mess because that’s real life. I need something real and honest, hard-living and so true it hurts to think about. I want the pain that comes with something so deep that I bleed when you’re the one who’s cut.”

“Baby.” I don’t even recognize my voice. It’s deeper than normal, wounded, fucking petrified and ready. Needy. It has her chest inflating, her shoulders squaring and my baby girl, she pushes closer.

“You were right before and you know it.” She stares at me, into my soul, and whispers, “It’s not the prince I’d go for.”

Fuck me, if those aren’t the magic words. Words I needed but didn’t, ‘cause like she said, I was right, and I knew it when I said it to her.

She repeats the words I spoke to her once with a shaky but sure little laugh. “You’re far from decent and a total dick.”