Dane

He was frantic. As if his whole life was grains of sand slipping through his fingers. He had to get her to listen. She had to understand. But the rage and pain on her face was cutting him in half.

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"Lila, I won't touch you," he said, though it ached in his chest to promise it. "I won't make you do anything. You don't even have to answer if you don't want to. Just… please… listen to me."

She wiped her face and even though her chest kept catching, she folded her arms and stared at him. "Okay. Fine. What?"

He took a deep breath and held her gaze, didn't let her look away. "You know how much I love you, and how much I want you." Her face crumpled and he rushed on. "None of that has changed, okay? You have to believe me, Lila, what you saw… it wasn't sex it was… touching. And it was the only way. I hated it so bad I vomited afterwards. For real. All I could think of was you and how much I loved you and… it broke me." He closed his eyes for a second as a wave of pain washed over him, pain and fear that his father had done his work too well. "I swear to God, Lila, it broke me. I wanted to die after, because I knew what it would do to you and I couldn't live with it. But… I had to live with it otherwise he was going to hurt you and fuck, Lila, please… forgive me, please. He made me do it because he knew it was the only part of us that he could touch. Don't let him destroy us. Please!"

Her brow was a mass of lines, her lips turned down so hard her cheeks lined with it.

"You didn't actually have sex?"

"No. I swear. I told him I couldn't. I would have… I wouldn't have been capable."

"But… you had an orgasm."

"Because I sat back and thought about you. How much I missed you. How much I wanted you. I closed my eyes and pretended it was you. It was the only way. Lila… my body was there with her, but in my head… I was with you. I swear it."

She stared at him, her face a mask of pain and fear. "It hurt me, Dane. You have no idea… It made me weak."

"You aren't weak, baby. You're so strong. We can get through this. I promise."

Her expression said she wasn't so sure, but even as her tears returned, she kept blinking and breathing. He could see her trying to come out of the anger.

"You swear to me you didn't… you two didn't…"

"I haven't had sex with anyone except you since the day we met, Lila. On my life. Even my psychotic father recognized I wasn't capable of it."

"Except, you were," she said darkly. But before he could answer, she shuddered and covered her face with her hands. "That woman… I can't stop seeing you touch her and… taste her. You kissed her skin the way you kiss mine, Dane!"

"Because I was thinking about you," he rasped. He had to swallow the lump in his throat twice before he could speak again. "I get it, Lila. I do. I understand how hard that was to watch. But you have to know, in me… in my head and my heart… it was all about you. There was nothing of her in it."

She started to turn away and he panicked, leapt to his feet and cried to her, "Lila, you're in the only thing in this world that makes sense to me. At all. You can't leave me because of him, please. I can… I can take the rest. I can deal with it. But not you, please…"

She stopped turning from him and stared, her eyes searching his, then trailing over the rest of him, his face, his chest, down his arms, to his hands.

He held his breath when she stepped up close to him and took one of them in hers, turning it over, stroking his palm. "I have been aching to have your hands on me, Dane," she whispered. "Literally dreaming about you. Even on the scariest days, my skin would tingle when I'd think about you."

"Lila—"

"Then I watched that video and it made everything… uncertain."

"Don't you get it, Lila? That's what he does. That's what he's always done. It's what gave him shits and giggles," Dane said angrily. "It's always been his goal to strip people down to their basest foundation and then rip that out from under them. You were strong, and he saw it. He saw that you wouldn't give in to him. It had to be me that hurt you bad enough to make you shaky. That's exactly why he did it."

Her face was troubled. "What about the other videos? Those weren't because of me."

"They were real. But it was always the same—always something he made me do. Always under a threat. It was always about power with him—and fear."

"You killed your own dog."

"Because if I hadn't, he would have killed a human being."

"You hurt those people. They're—"

"I didn't kill them. He did. He cut the video off at that spot because I stopped. After that first blow, when I heard the sound it made… I lost my nerve. I couldn't fake enjoying it anymore. I couldn't go through with it. And he punished me for that."

Her face pinched with empathy for him, then she caught herself and looked away, biting her lip. He waited. Her shoulders still shook at times, but she was calming. Dane let himself hope.

Please, God. Please. Show her I'm telling the truth.

He closed his fingers around hers. "My father's dead, Lila. I stood over his dead body and watched him bleed out. He's gone. He'll never be back. And he'll never have that power over me again."

"So, you admit he has power over you?"

Dane frowned. "Of course. When have I ever denied it?"

"I just… I don't understand why you would let him force you to do… those things. Any of them."

"Because the threat of what would happen if I didn't was worse."

She blinked and turned back to stare at him then, her eyes wide. "Was it?"

"Yes! People would have died—you would have died! Or I would have. It was better to take that on myself than let those things happen."

Her face cleared suddenly and she peered at him, her fingers tightening on his in his grip. "You really believe that."

Dane was confused. "Yes. Of course."

"That's the problem."

"What?"

"I'm not worth that killing your soul for, Dane."

"What are you talking about?"

She pulled her hand out of his, but didn't look away and didn't move. "What would have happened if you hadn't gotten free? If he was still alive and you were stuck there, and I was here by myself, having watched that… that… horrible thing and I didn't know you hadn't had sex with her? It's killing me, Dane. Seeing you like that. Even knowing that it wasn't as bad as I thought, it's still cutting me up."

His breath shoved out in a whoosh and ran a hand through his hair. "It's better for you to be alive and… and heartbroken, than to be dead."

"No, it's not."

"What? I don't think I could keep going if you weren't here, Lila! How can you say that?"

"Because it's not a life when you're dead inside. And it's not just my life. It's not just me. It's you as well. Doing that… putting yourself through that… it wasn't just destroying our relationship, it was destroying you. I can see the darkness in you Dane. That wasn't there before you went back to him. It's because of this. Because of what you were willing to do—for me. I get it. I hear you. I know that's how it worked in your head. But you have to understand: killing your soul to save someone else's body… it doesn't work. It just destroys both of you."

"How can you say that?" he snarled, fighting the urge to step away from her. "How can you even think that? Keeping you safe is EVERYTHING to me!"

"That's the problem, Dane. You think safety is just about your body. You think as long as people aren't physically injured, that they're safe. It's a lie."

"What?"

"For the past few days I've been sitting in this Penthouse, safe as houses. No one can get to me. No one can hurt me. I've got everything my body needs to be clean and healthy and full. And… I've been dying.

"Safety has to be more than physical. If you're safe in your body, but not in your mind and your heart, it's not a life. It's a walking death."

He narrowed his eyes and shook his head. "You're seeing this all wrong—I was willing to give up to help you—"

"I know, and I love you for it," she said quietly, and for the first time she reached for him, put a hand to his stomach and he sucked in, staring at it. Pleading with God to let her not stop there. "The problem is," she continued, "Is that you're seeing me as more worth saving than yourself. You think you're deserving of all this darkness your father brought into your life. But—even if it's for other people, even if it's for me!—it isn't okay for you to be destroyed, heart and soul, to save a piece of someone else. I love you, Dane. If you're destroyed, I'm destroyed. Do you get that?"