Deviant Love

25 - HER

[Chapter 25]

I didn't move. Didn't breathe.

Alex stood between me and the door, perfectly at ease, like he wasn't a man who had just been caught with a shrine to my existence. Like he wasn't completely unhinged.

His blue eyes locked onto mine, calm, sharp—obsessive. But beneath that control, beneath the perfect, crafted composure, there was something far more dangerous than anger.

Affection.

Not the soft kind. Not the kind that made you feel warm and safe and whole.

No—this was a slow-burning, all-consuming, I'd-burn-the-world-for-you kind of love. The type that suffocated. The kind that left no escape.

And it terrified me.

Roman shifted beside him, arms crossed, voice tight. "Alex, let her leave."

Alex inhaled slowly and exhaled even slower. His gaze never wavered.

"No."

A single word. Cold. Absolute.

Not a refusal.

A sentence.

A laugh—sharp, humorless, borderline hysterical—bubbled up my throat. "Oh, well, since you said no, I guess that's it then, huh?" I threw my hands up. "Because obviously, I have no say in my own goddamn life anymore."

Alex's jaw flexed, but instead of looking remotely guilty, his lips curved.

Like he was amused.

Like my rage was adorable to him.

"You always have a say, sweetheart."

My stomach turned at the sound of that name. Sweetheart. He used to whisper it against my skin. Murmur it into my hair while I slept. Now? Now it felt like a collar.

Like a chain.

----

[flashback]

"Daisy, don't move."

I froze mid-step, one foot hovering above the creaky floorboards of his or as he liked to call our tiny apartment. Alex stood near me, a walking disaster waiting to happen, arms stretched wide as he attempted to balance a dripping bowl of pasta in one hand and a precarious, tottering stack of books in the other.

His eyes flicked to me, wild with panic, his entire body tensed like a man facing imminent doom.

"What? Why?" I asked, trying (and failing) not to laugh.

Alex winced, adjusting his grip as one of the books wobbled dangerously. "Because if you take one more step, this entire situation is going to collapse—and by 'this situation,' I mean me."

I tilted my head, barely containing my amusement. "Are you saying I should just stand here and watch you struggle?"

"Yes," he gritted out, his biceps straining under the weight of my terrible decision-making. Damn, those muscles. "That's exactly what I'm saying."

I crossed my arms, pretending to give it serious thought. "Hmm. Tempting. But you look so helpless. Wouldn't be fair to—"

And then it happened.

The books fell first, tumbling in a spectacular cascade of pages and covers, slamming against the floor in slow-motion destruction.

The bowl of pasta—his precious, painstakingly made pasta—followed immediately after, slipping from his grasp in a tragic, gravity-defying arc of doom.