LOGIN44Bella ReyesAries couldn't know I was pregnant. Absolutely not. But how the hell was I supposed to explain this constant fatigue and morning sickness? The freezing rain, that had to be it. I had caught a brutal cold. The exact lie I had cooked up for him, and thankfully, he bought it without a second thought.I had barfed my lungs out so violently that I had put Aries to work cleaning up after me. He didn't complain once. Instead, he had gently held my hair back while I threw up, exactly like he'd done at my workplace that day. With gestures like this, how was I supposed to walk away and stop myself from falling head over heels for him?Was it because of his baby growing inside me? The lingering hormones he'd left in my system that made me feel this chaotic mess of emotions? It was his baby doing this to my body, or maybe it was just the sex. Maybe if I let him sleep with me again, this aching craving for him would finally stop.I hoped to God it would, because tonight I might actu
43Aries HadidShe wanted to know me so bad, wanted me to open up my black heart so she could see the ragged, shattered mess of a human being I was underneath all the aura and allure. So I took her to the one place that always brought it out of me.Hatred, ruin, and volatile emotions that clawed at my chest, the kind of heavy, dark agony I had never learned how to manage or control.Bella followed me like a moth to a flame, walking right into the trap without even realizing it. The estate cemetery was pitch-black, and my mother's headstone loomed like a dark, silent shadow against the thunder. There was no shelter out here, nothing at all to shield her marker from the storm. Come rain or come shine, the elements beat down on her headstone mercilessly.“Right there,” I pointed, turning enough to see Bella standing there, drenched head-to-toe in the freezing rain. I could barely keep my eyes open, and part of me wanted to squeeze them shut forever, to tear my own heart out just to make
42Bella ReyesAries walked off, and I definitely didn't think he was just arrogant. No. I stood there watching him, my vision tunneling straight onto his retreating figure. The sky opened up all of a sudden. A torrential downpour crashed down with a violent wave of rain and heavy wind, anchoring my feet to the ground. I forgot how to move as the memory of the way Aries had looked at me, like he genuinely hated my guts, played on an endless loop inside my head. Over and over again.He hated me. He wanted me to stay away. But why the fuck couldn't I just do that? Just stay the fuck away from him.Why did every single road in my life have to lead right back to him? I had come to this spot to clear my head from the suffocating pressure of that house, not to drown in a whole new kind of misery, especially not from him. But he looked at me like I was standing in the middle of his happiness, blocking every ray of light he had left.Damn this rain. Damn the wind. Damn me for being so stupid
41Aries HadidI saw her before she even spotted me and called out. “Aries?”I was already moving, quickening my pace through the damp chill. What the hell was she doing out here?“Aries, is that you?” The wind whipped her words across the dark, hitting me with a sweetness that completely unspooled me, cutting deeper than the sorrow and rage clawing at my insides.Bella's voice cutting through the bruising, howling wind of a miserable evening like this felt unreal. It was sweet yet haunting, and right then and there, I realized Bella Reyes was going to be the absolute end of me.How much longer was I supposed to pretend I didn't care? I loved this girl, and running away wasn't doing a damn thing except hurting and killing me from the inside out.I ground to a halt before I even realized I was stopping. For a terrifying second, I contemplated just keeping my back to her, walking right off into the dark without ever turning around. But with a chaotic storm of thoughts warring inside me,
40Bella ReyesI scrambled up so fast it felt like the speed of light, and the next second the room echoed with the sharp crack of my palm hitting her cheek. “What part of keeping your hands to yourself didn't you understand?”Rhea staggered back, clutching her face with absolute shock frozen in her eyes. That served her right. I had warned her. I was always warning Rhea Sullivan to keep her hands off me and take her trash talk elsewhere.I had made that crystal clear, and this wasn't Terraria University where she could pull whatever bullshit she liked and expect me to just take it.The adrenaline surging through my veins barely let me register the pure, dumbfounded look on her face.“You crossed a line, and I told you not to test me,” I spat, scrambling off the floor, onto the bed, and trying to shake off the weird, dull ache radiating through my ankle, when the little rat lunged again. This time she caught a handful of my hair, yanking it back so hard I couldn't stop the sharp wince
39Bella Reyes I was going to throw up my intestines, and the next thing out of my mouth was going to be this fucking baby. Only I wished barfing my guts out was ever going to be enough to do the trick.I wanted this shit right out of my system. Gone. I was exhausted, livid, and deeply ashamed. What the hell was Aries even doing here with her? Who was she to him, anyway?Wasn't it Tyler she was all over a minute ago, and now Rhea was latched onto Aries?I was doubled over the sink, my spine hunched and aching from how long I'd been hanging there, dry-heaving and gagging until my lungs and throat burned.I hated this fucking place. I regretted ever coming. And God, I wished I had the luxury to just walk out that door and leave this entire estate behind, just like Aries had. He had stormed out so savage, and nobody had dared say a damn word to stop him.Not even my loud-mouthed mother. He had been yelling right in that man's face like his father was absolute garbage. And Leonard, like







