Free Spike: (#3.5 The Beat and the Pulse) by Amity Cross Page B

couldn’t take this bullshit again. Not after everything we’d been through to get here.
    Shoving away from him, I strode down the hall and into the bedroom. I couldn’t be here.
    Not anymore.

Twelve
    Ash

    My father was right.
    In that moment, when my hand was wrapped around Ren’s arm and her anger toward me was an inferno, a switch was flipped in my head. I was crossing a line I vowed never to toe.
    I let her go, and she shoved me away, making a break for the bedroom.
    Desperation began to creep through my veins, and I followed her. I needed to fix this. I was pissed at my dad, I was pissed at myself, and I was afraid of the things I was capable of, but I still needed her .
    She was in the walk-in closet, pulling clothes off hangers and opening drawers, leaving things strewn all over the place. In the two seconds she’d been in here, it looked like a bomb had gone off, and I clutched the doorjamb with a trembling hand. She was shoving clothes haphazardly into her bag, not even slowing to fold them.
    “What are you doing?” I asked, watching her with mounting anxiety.
    “What does it look like?” she snapped, not even glancing up at me.
    “ You’re leaving? ”
    “I’ve told you time and time again secrets are a deal breaker. That, downstairs…” She shook her head, clearly disappointed and hurt. “I remember that. You’ve done it to me before.”
    The night Hammer attacked her . She thought I was going to leave her? I wasn’t, but it was inevitable that our road would lead us there if I couldn’t control the monster inside me. Selfishly, I still didn’t want her to go.
    “No, no, no ,” I wailed. “Ren, please .”
    “Fucked if I let you do it to me again.” If she felt at least a little upset at the fact that I was here on the verge of delirium, she didn’t show it.
    “Where are you going?” I asked, knowing she’d probably go straight to Beat.
    She ignored my question and zipped up her bag, the rasp of the zipper sounding very final in the quiet room.
    I reached out for her as she weaved past me, desperate to feel her skin against mine, and she jerked backward like I was poison.
    “Don’t,” she hissed, holding her free hand in the air. Her gaze didn’t meet mine, and I felt the emptiness beginning to overwhelm me already.
    “Ren, you can’t leave,” I pleaded.
    “Then tell me what’s been going on.”
    My chest tightened, and my throat felt thick. I couldn’t tell her the thing I feared the most, not after all that we’d seen. I couldn’t make this moment worse than it already was because she’d want to stay and then… What would happen then?
    Her gaze finally met mine and it was laced with bitter disappointment. Slowly, her head moved from side to side, and she grimaced, a single tear sliding down her cheek. I ached to touch her, to make her stay, but if my father was right…
    She swallowed hard and turned, practically running from the room. I followed her like a fool, but all I saw was her back as she left, and when the door slammed closed behind her, everything seemed to stop. Silence enveloped the apartment and my entire world in a way I never thought possible. It was always so full of her—my Ren—and now there was nothing.
    My fingers began to ache, and I curled them into tight fists. I was meant to be strong for her, a pillar that she could lean on, not the other way around. I was a ticking time bomb.
    Glancing out the corner of my eye, I saw the fuzzy outline of the photographs that I’d hung on the wall for her. The one of her and her dad, the one of her and her mum and the one of us together at the gym’s opening party.
    I couldn’t bring myself to let her in, and this time, to save herself from the same bullshit I’d put her through before, she’d left me. She was gone.
    Turning, I stared at the photo of her and me standing chest to chest at Pulse’s opening party. The giddy happiness I’d felt that night now replaced with nothing but shame. I was such a