Page 120 of Ignition

He shook his head heavily.

“What’s your problem?” I snapped back, teeth grinding.

“My problem?”

A humourless laugh spilled from his lips, zig-zagging in the cavernous hallway, bouncing off the walls and amplifying, until it was coming from everywhere and nowhere all at once.

“I’ve been trying to protect you. And then you go and act like a bitch in heat to someone who’s been nothing but an asshole to you!”

My face blanched.

The world tilted from under my feet, and one of my hands shot out to steady me against the wall before my knees would give out and I’d topple over and break into a million brittle pieces.

Sound turned all garbled, until I had difficulty making out what he was spewing at me.

He carried on, and though I couldn’t hear, my body flinched away from him, as if it had. I opened my mouth to speak, but no words would come, throat encased in a wall of burning ice.

“Why would you listen to me?”

His voice turned strangely high-pitched, cracking at the end, and I might have laughed, if he hadn’t looked a little manic.

He smiled a cold, cruel smile that felt like a knife along my ribs.

“After all… Josh has always been so good”—his eyes dipped to my swollen mouth and smeared lipstick—“at turning girls into whores.”

He dragged out each word, sharp needles spearing into my chest.

I rubbed my hands over my upper arms, trying to coax sensation into limbs that felt both leaden and strangely weightless, while my mind rebelled against the sheer fabric of reality, splitting him into two: Liam, my friend, always there with a kind word and a smile, and this cold, cruel stranger wearing his face.

A couple burst from a nearby door, their giggles scraping against my eardrums until they drew blood.

I waited until they slithered away, arms around each other. The sight only kicked up more bile.

“How can you say that to me?” My voice quivered and broke, echoing in the now eerily silent hall.

He peered down at me with pity in his eyes and shook his head.

“How can I? Look at yourself.”

He shrugged, but the move looked almost violent, as if he’d been electrocuted.

“You look like such a fucking—”

“That’s enough.” A cool voice sliced from behind me, silencing him.

Chapter thirty-seven

Mia

Relief flooded me at the sound of his decisive footsteps, though his voice had never quite sounded that cold and deadly calm.

I whirled around, wanting to bury my face in his chest, but his expression smothered the urge at once.

He was a mask of controlled fury: sharp, icy eyes, a muscle jumping in his steely jaw, colour all but drained from his face. Everything gave the dark glint in his gaze more weight.

I peered over my shoulder at Liam, who’d opened his mouth to argue, skin still blotched scarlet, glaring at the pair of us, like we’d proven his point.

He wasn’t even looking at me, but through me, at Josh. But whatever he glimpsed in his face snapped his jaw shut again—words I wasn’t sure I even wanted to hear, swallowed into silence.