Kill Switch by Penelope Douglas

“You think you can stop me?” I stared at him over the fire.
Is that why he was here? Doing Rika’s bidding and trying to
arm Winter against me?
But his eyes danced with mischief even though he still
wasn’t looking at me. “You didn’t think that beating I gave
you was the end of it, did you?”
My smile froze, remembering the beating I let him give me
last year, because I knew I deserved it. I’d knelt there, letting
him hit me again and again, because I wanted to feel worse on
the outside than I did on the inside, and for so many moments,
I just wanted him to kill me. Just kill me, because I can’t take
it back, and I can’t move on.
I’d almost killed him. And I wanted him to hate me so hard
he would fucking murder me, and then maybe, after his anger
was spent, he’d love me again. Whether I lived or died, he
needed to forgive me for standing by and letting Michael’s
brother do what he did on that yacht that night.
But I wasn’t the only one to blame for all that shit that
went down two years ago after we got out of prison, either. I
took my punishment for my part, but I wasn’t taking it lying
down again.
And if at least a small part of him wasn’t willing to forgive
me, he wouldn’t be here now. He wanted to be here. He hadn’t
let it go, which meant he hadn’t let me go. Not completely.
“You missed me,” I said in a low voice.
He moved behind the flames, circling the fire slowly, and I
did the same, following him.
“Didn’t you?” I taunted.
His wet jeans clung to his legs, and I noticed he’d added
some more ink to his chest and arms since I last saw him.
But some things hadn’t changed. He was still dwelling on
shit and still getting drunk and high all the time. He needed
me.
A small chuckle escaped him as I caught his eyes again.
“You were my heroin once upon a time,” he said, and his eyes