When I glance back up, he’s staring at me with a stoic look on his face, the muscle in his jaw pulsating as he grinds his teeth.
“I’m not hungry,” I whisper.
He drops his head, and a flush crawls up my throat when I hear him laugh, the sound lacking humor. Sick with embarrassment, I stand so quickly that the chair tips over. His head snaps up right as I turn to bolt. Tears are welling in my eyes again, and I’m so fucking tired of crying.
I only manage a step before he’s lunging across the table and fisting my hair. In one powerful yank, I fly backward, landing painfully on the wooden table with a yelp.
I’m frozen with shock as I try to process what the hell just happened. The only thing I’m capable of is to stare at him with absolute astonishment, my eyes rounded and mouth parted. Even upside down, he looks terrifying.
“Tell me, bella ladra, am I so unforgettable that you’ve failed to remember how deeply my cock has filled you? Or did you hit your head and lose your fucking mind?”
I shake my head, speechless and unable to understand what the fuck that even means.
“Whatever you thought I meant, you’re wrong,” he says, understanding that his earlier words hurt me.
I blink. “You said—”
“I know what the fuck I said, Sawyer.”
“Then why did you say it?” I snap, the anger finally re-emerging.
He leans down, the storm raging in his eyes fiercer than the one that got us in this stupid situation.
“Because it pisses me off that I want you as badly as I do,” he growls, his voice deepened with a darkness only found in the depths of the sea.
His hand curls tighter into my hair, and sharp pinpricks pierce against my scalp. I cry out, my back arching and nails clawing at his arm in a desperate attempt to relieve the pain.
Ignoring my struggles, his eyes rake down my body, a volcano erupting in the ocean in his eyes. “I can’t stand to look at you. Not because I don’t like what I see, Sawyer. It’s because I fucking hate how it makes me feel.”
He drags me across the table and spins me around until I’m facing him, wringing a gasp from my throat as he forces me into an upright position. I’m reeling and disoriented, so I can only gape at him when he shoves himself between my knees.
I’m trying to make sense of what he’s saying, but I’m hypnotized by the lightning in his hazel eyes and the severe expression on his face.
“I don’t understand what happened today. You said you wouldn’t be cruel anymore.”
He reaches behind his back for something and then produces a thin, gold card.
A credit card.
The one I opened in his name. On cue, he flips it around, his full name in my face, nearly mocking me.
“I was taking the sheets off to wash this morning when I found this hiding under the mattress.”
My mouth opens, but he’s already talking, “You were hiding it from me. Why does it feel like another fucking lie, Sawyer?”
“I wasn’t keeping it so I could use it, I promise,” I swear vehemently. “It was in my back pocket when you brought me onto the boat, and somehow, it didn’t slip out from the wreck. I hid it when we first got here, and I just… I haven’t gotten rid of it yet.”
As the last word leaves my mouth, I cringe, realizing how much that sounded like a weak excuse. He’s going to think I’m lying, but for once, I’m telling the complete truth. I don’t want to lie to him anymore. I want him to see all my ugly truths and accept me anyway.
“I should’ve just tossed it in the ocean. I don’t know why I didn’t,” I admit. “But it was never with the intention to use it again.”
He tosses the flimsy plastic onto the table next to me and then plants his fists on either side of my hips, getting in my face.
The fire alarm has been switched, and any oxygen I had stored in my lungs has evacuated.
“Why do I believe you?” he asks aloud, though I’m not sure he intended for me to answer.
“I don’t want to believe you, Sawyer. Because the last time I did, you fucking hurt me.”
My lip trembles, guilt and shame crashing through me so profoundly, that it feels as if it’s rewriting my DNA. I can feel nothing—be nothing—past the damage I’ve done. Not just to Enzo but to so many innocent people.
“I’m sorry,” I rasp, a single tear wiggling loose. He tracks the drop, watching it fall from my chin and onto my bare legs. My shirt has ridden up, and though I’m still wearing my bathing suit beneath, I’ve never felt barer.