Breakers (Academy of Stardom #3) - Bea Paige Page 0,2

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Tears prick my eyes. “Let you explain? Let you fucking explain?! You drugged me. You stabbed me with a needle and knocked me the fuck out, Xeno! You stole hours of my life. Why would you do that? Why would you fucking hurt me like that?”

My body shakes so hard that my teeth start to chatter, and my skin covers in a sheen of sweat, instantly cooling my heated, enraged heart until it’s ice cold. I want to throw up. But there’s nothing in my stomach, so I just heave and gag instead. I double over, retching, with nothing to show for it but a burn in the back of my throat that matches the sting in my eyes.

“It’s okay, you’re safe,” Xeno says softly, but there’s the slightest hint of an edge to his voice as though he doesn’t quite believe that either. It’s as though the softness of his tone is covering up how he truly feels. When he presses his hand against my lower back, I feel the tension he holds, and the lies burn a tattoo into my skin.

“Safe?” I hiss, forcing myself upright and backing away from him even though a small part of me wants to step towards him, but fuck that. Just because he says I’m safe doesn’t mean it’s true. Xeno asked me to trust him, and then knocked me out. How can I trust him now? Who the fuck does that to someone they supposedly care about? “Don’t you dare lie to me!”

“Sit down. Let me explain.” There’s a pained look on his face, and I see how his hands shake, how he curls his fingers into fists trying to suppress whatever’s eating him up inside. “I won’t hurt you.”

I bark out a laugh. It sounds thready, broken. “Again, lies! I see you. I fucking see you, Xeno,” I shout, my gaze falling on his fists, at the veins bulging beneath his forearms like any minute now he’s going to lose his cool and show me the man underneath the mask.

He shakes his head, his nostrils flaring as he uncurls his fingers and shakes out his hands. “Don’t make this harder than it already is. Sit down,” he orders, pulling out a chair at the table.

“Where am I?” I snap, ignoring his request and looking wildly around me. Hanging on the wall above the fireplace is another huge painting similar in style to the one in the bedroom, the bold colours and style familiar even though I don’t know why that is right now. My head’s still too foggy, my thoughts disjointed.

“If you calm down, I’ll tell you.”

“Don’t fucking patronise me, Xeno,” I snap, forcing myself to look at him.

He watches me carefully, his bottle-green eyes glinting like cut glass. The shards deep enough to cut. He always knew how to make me bleed, this is no different. Without even saying a word he hurts me, and I’m done with it.

“Tell me where the fuck I am!” I shout, my hands grabbing hold of the beige sofa behind me, a fine-knit throw chucked across it. My fingers curl into it and I have the urge to pick it up and wrap it around my shoulders. This place is luxurious, homely, warm, but I just feel cold, afraid, uncertain. I let go of the material. “Did you think that bringing me here would lull me into a false sense of security? That I would lower my guard because I hadn’t just woken up in some dingy cellar somewhere tied to a fucking bed? Did you assume that I would relax because there are photos of happy, smiling people I don’t recognise lined up across that fireplace?” Even the familiar smell of coffee feels like a trap. My eyes track across the kitchen countertop behind him where four mugs are sitting, heat rising.

“No, that isn’t what I thought, but if you want, I can take you to a fucking basement and tie you to a bed if that would make you fucking listen to me!” he snaps back, forcing me to look at him once more.

“I bet you’d like that wouldn’t you, huh? I’d bet you’d like me at your mercy. ”

He growls at that. A deep rumble rising up his throat. “You have no idea what you’re saying.”

“No? Then why are you looking at me that way? Why do I get the feeling that you’re a second away from proving me right, that I’m not safe? That I’ll never be safe with