Chapter 6

Scarlett POV It’s late at night; my body should’ve been begging for sleep. I pulled my knees up to my chest and rested my forehead against them. And yeah… I still loved him. That was the humiliating truth I couldn’t get away from, no matter how many times I listed everything he’d done. Divorce hadn’t magically erased ten years of feelings. I could hate the way Jaxen had treated me and still remember the first time I saw him when I was seventeen. I could be furious with him and still remember the exact scent that always clung to his clothes. I could decide to leave and still wish, somewhere deep down in the stupidest part of me, that he would stop me. That was the part I hated admitting, even to myself. After everything that had happened, some foolish little piece of me still wanted him to come after me. To tell me I was wrong. To tell me he couldn’t let me go. But that wasn’t the man I had married. And if I stayed close to him, I knew I’d just keep waiting for him to become that man. I’d already spent too many years waiting. I lay down, pulled the blanket over myself, and closed my eyes. Sleep eventually came. But it didn’t stay gentle. In the dream, Jaxen was standing at the foot of our bed. His shirt was gone, and I could see the old scars crossing his broad chest, pale against his skin. His amber eyes held a darkness I’d never seen before: not anger exactly, something heavier. “Scarlett.” Just my name, said in that low voice of his, and somehow it was enough to make me forget how to move. He stepped closer. His hand settled against my waist, and the touch felt impossibly real: solid, familiar in a way that made my breath catch. “Do you really think leaving me will make you free?” I swallowed hard. “Jaxen…” He leaned in, and his scent surrounded me, which had been haunting my dreams since the day I met him. His forehead touched mine. The contact was so gentle it almost hurt. “You’re my Luna.” I wanted to tell him no, and I wanted to say that I wasn’t his anything anymore, that I’d already made my decision, that I was done. But my hands had found his shoulders before I could get a single word out. He pulled me against him, and my heart started racing so hard I could hear it in my ears. “We’re getting divorced,” I managed. His mouth brushed my ear, the words so quiet they felt like they were coming from inside my head. “No. You don’t get to leave.” He pressed in closer, burying his face right in the curve of my neck and just… breathing me in, slowly, like he was trying to memorize it. The scrape of his stubble against my skin sent a sharp little electric itch racing straight down my spine. I almost made a sound. My fingers twisted into the front of his chest instead, half pushing, half hanging on. Then his head snapped up, and his mouth was on mine. His tongue pushed past my lips right away, deep and relentless, tasting every corner while his hips pinned me so hard against the wall that breathing suddenly felt like something I had to negotiate for. I woke up with a sharp gasp. For several seconds, I did not know where I was. My breathing was all uneven, and the surrounding room looked completely strange in the dark. Then I felt the damp fabric clinging to my legs, and heat rushed straight into my face. “Oh, God.” I sat up and shoved my hair out of my face, staring at the unfamiliar ceiling. I pressed both hands to my face. “Seriously?” I had spent the entire day trying to cut Jaxen out of my life, and my brain had dragged him straight back into my bed. But the worst part wasn’t the dream itself. It was what he had said. “You’re my Luna. You don’t get to leave.” Those were the exact words I’d wanted to hear from him for years. Not in a dream. Not when I was already walking away. Hearing them now, even just in my head, felt like someone had reached into my chest and twisted. I forced myself out of bed and went into the bathroom. The mirror showed a woman with tangled hair and flushed cheeks. I looked exhausted, embarrassed, and way less certain than I wanted to be. “You’re pathetic,” I told my reflection. I turned on the faucet and splashed cold water on my face. When I lifted my head again, something beneath my collarbone caught my attention. A faint red mark. I frowned and leaned closer to the mirror. It was barely there, almost too faint to see. I touched it with my fingertips, but there was no pain. Probably nothing. Just some weird dream leftover my brain had invented. I lowered my hand and looked myself in the eye. “No. You’re leaving him. You’re free.” I said it again. The words still didn’t feel completely true yet. Maybe they wouldn’t for a while. But I had already decided. Tomorrow I would go back to Hale Group, finish what I needed to finish, and take back whatever was still mine. For once, I was going back for myself.