It's a fact that you can't help who you fall in love with. And for Rosaline Davenport and him, it definitely shouldn't have been each other.
Because, sometimes, love stories have blood on them.
[warning: this is the mother of all slow-burns]
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— i only skimmed through comments on previous chapter, so i don't really know if anyone had a go at Dumont, but I just want to point out that if Zach's character was written as an abuser, Dumont would've been expected to not give his friend the benefit of the doubt & to take an objective stand. We cannot pick and choose how men are supposed to behave in given situations based on our convenience (:
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【 56.
Fifty-six
Sitamgar 】
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[ Sitamgar • tormentor, beloved ]
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DESPITE THE FALSE bravado she tried to instil in herself, Rose knows hell is about to break loose the instant she gets into the passenger seat of his car.
The door to the driver’s side flies open and Rose shuts her eyes. She feels the added weight when Zach takes the seat, and then the slam of the door reverberates through the entire car. Realising there’s no escaping the grave she dug for herself, she lets her eyes open.
“Oh, sorry,” Zach mocks, a dark chuckle punctuating the word, “I probably shouldn’t have done that,” he clicks his tongue, obviously referring to slamming the door, “wouldn’t want you thinking I’m a threat to you.”
Exhaling shakily, Rose swallows and turns to him. “Zach—”
“No!” He whips his head in her direction, voice of pure fire and eyes like burning coals. He wears fury like he was born to embody it, to be its vessel. It’s fury she’s never seen on him before. Everything—everything—seems smaller in comparison to the anger rolling off him in tangible waves.
And yet all her unease, her nerves, her laboured breaths—all of them are not caused by some non-existent fear of him. It is part embarrassment, part disbelief towards her own self, and part guilt. She did something she can never take back. The fact didn’t strike her as hard as it does right now—when he’s just an arm’s length away, visibly shaking with anger, his whole posture tightened into sharp edges and hard lines, personifying rage like she’s never witnessed, and all she feels is weariness. Not threatened. Not endangered. Not afraid.
The awareness only pushes bile to her throat, and as the haze of shock from earlier begins to clear, it starts to sink into her conscience the gravity of what she allowed to happen back in the restaurant. Of what she allowed him—Zach—the man she’s painstakingly in love with—to be painted as. The man who she knows, without a flicker of doubt, would burn his hands keeping the flames away from her—yet would riot and revolt if she tried doing the same for him.
