Page 124 of Manic

My heart thundered.

“I couldn’t bring myself to tell you,” he said.

“Why?”

He sighed, his brows furrowing. “Because everyone I care about dies in my world. My entire life is a fucking mess, and I wanted to spare you.”

“From what?”

“From me.”

And just like that, it all made sense.

The way he’d intentionally piss me off every time I saw him. How he truly felt about himself, whispered the night he’d slept beside me. The blame he carried—for Raven and his mother.

Manic carried more than I let myself see before, and he’d wanted to spare me from everything. He wanted me to hate him. If I hated him as much as he hated himself, then maybe I wouldn’t want him at all.

It might have worked, yet all it did was heighten my conflicting emotions. My skin buzzed as I studied him. The tightness along his jaw and his drooping frame, curling in on itself.

I saw it then—the wariness.

The guilt he carried.

The invisible weight on his shoulders.

“I was fighting the inevitable,” he said softly. “After I took you, I knew it was impossible to spare you from this life, not when your father had dragged you into it.”

He lifted his hand to my face again, his thumb gently swiping my lower lip. I trembled beneath his touch, comforting and unsettling all at once. Not because of Manic, but because of how I felt about him. Was this inevitable between us?

“I’d given up on life the night we met,” he continued, breathing a small sigh. “But then I looked at you… and everything quieted for the first time. The noise. My anger. The urge to torture my captives. So yes, I followed you because it left me curious. Then you arrived at my penthouse and that pressure returned, but violence didn’t ease it. You did.”

The days he’d disappeared only to come back bloody from killing those Irish resurfaced, and my heart cracked. That was why he looked in control when he watched me on my bed. That was why his moods have seemed to level the longer I remained his captive.

Was I just another vice, or something more?

Either way, a strange tenderness gathered inside me, like I couldn’t help but understand.

His expression softened. “You’re not angry.”

“Do you want me to be?”

I should have been furious, because any sane person would have been, but my anger felt… wrong. Misplaced. Like I’d skipped right past it and landed somewhere far more dangerous, which was right in the palm of his hands. If anything, I was a bit relieved that Manic was my admirer and not one of the Russians.

“I liked them,” I whispered, blinking away the overwhelming emotion flooding my eyes. “Your gifts, even if they were cryptic—even when you pissed me off half the time. Did they mean something, or were you just toying with me?”

He chuckled lightly, warmth settling behind his eyes. I ground my teeth, recalling my frustration every time he’d given me something. The peonies. Those failed dates. My face flushed, and a quiet huff escaped me.

“Do you know how many dates flaked on me because of you?” I hissed, pounding my hand into his chest before he gripped my wrist.

Manic smirked. “Fifteen.”

My pulse thumped at his stupid smirk and at how easily he said the number, like he’d counted each date. Each flower he’d sent me by the end of them.

My eyes flashed. “Fifteen men stood me up, and all I got for them were those stupid peonies.” They weren’t stupid. I loved them—every single one. “What happened to all those men?”

I wasn’t sure why I asked, because a knot formed in my stomach, and I immediately questioned whether I wanted to hear the answer. He offered no reply to that, only lifted his brow.

“How many dates did it take for you to become suspicious?”