"I need you to come to my place with me," he told her.

She took another step back, saying crisply, "That won't be happening."

He took a step toward her and she again retreated.

He stopped.

"Liv-"

"You need to leave," she declared.

What he needed to do, seriously belatedly, was stop f.u.c.king around.

"Liv, it started one way, but you know, you gotta know, where we are now is a very different thing."

She ignored his words.

"Now. If you don't mind. You need to leave now," she said, sweeping out an arm to indicate the door to the room.

"I fell for you."

"It's in your best interest-"

"I fell for you, baby."

"To go immediately."

"Please listen to me."

"You need to leave."

"I'm in love with you, Livvie."

It sliced right through him but she ignored that too.

"You need to leave now, Sebring."

He took another step toward her. "Baby, I'm in lo-"

Suddenly, she leaned toward him, for the first time letting loose the formidable temper he'd sensed, but she'd never lost control enough to let go, and in a shrill voice that pierced through his brain and his heart, she shrieked, "You need to leave now, Sebring!"

The pain in each syllable scoring away his flesh, he stopped moving and winced.

He forced a quick recovery and whispered, "Please come to me, Livvie, so I can explain."

"You need to leave. You need to leave. You need to f.u.c.king leave!" she shouted.

"Let me come to you."

"Leave!" she screeched.

The ice was gone but the pain was worse.

He had to get in there.

"I couldn't go through with it. That's why I ended things with you. You got under my skin, Liv. And obviously," he lifted both hands slightly at his sides, careful of even that move, the situation volatile, the outcome meaning everything, he was going cautious to the extreme, "I couldn't get you out."

He watched as she visibly tightened her entire frame, pulling it together, pus.h.i.+ng him out.

"She's gonna hurt you," she declared. "She's got acid in her veins, my sister. You're a threat and she'll eliminate you. She doesn't care. She put her father out there for murder. He'll never breathe free again. Her father. She won't blink at taking you down."

He started moving slowly toward her again. "I'll be fine. You'll be fine. We'll figure it out. We gotta do it with her, we'll figure it out with your sister."

"Do not come an inch closer to me, Sebring," she warned. She was losing it again, her tone suddenly feral, the green in her eyes flas.h.i.+ng.

He had that, not the ice, he could work it.

He had to.

So he kept moving.

"I fell in love with you, Liv."

"That's impossible."

"It isn't. It happened. And you-"

"It's impossible because there is no me to fall in love with. I don't exist."

That made him stop moving.

She continued speaking.

"I breathe. I'm here. I take up s.p.a.ce. I eat. I drive. But I have no brain. No will. No strength. No opinions. I do not matter to the point I do not exist."

"You exist for me."

"I didn't when you targeted me as your in to destroy my family," she returned immediately and unfortunately f.u.c.king accurately, going on the same way, "I can only a.s.sume you knew I had no dealings with that. You could, I'm sure, perform for a woman who was simply a tool. If you thought I had a part in trafficking humans and murdering your girlfriend, not even you could set that aside so completely as to perform so convincingly and repeatedly."

He tried to stop her. "Liv-"

"And it didn't matter to you that you were going to obliterate my world. I could not be tied to that heinous business but I was far from clean. If you took my father down, Georgia and I would go down with him. You sallied forth anyway, I meant that little to you. And of course you did. You didn't know me. You only knew I was a Shade. So of course I would mean that little to you. Being what I am, it's no surprise I mean that little to everybody."

f.u.c.k, she was killing him.

He had to f.u.c.king get in there.

"Baby-"

"Little did you know that all you would have had to do was approach me, share what had happened, and I would have been your insider ally, I'm so disgusted by just how despicable my father has proven that he is. And you can well imagine just how disgusted that is, with all I've shared with you during our artificial relations.h.i.+p, since I was already disgusted because I already thought he was extraordinarily despicable."

"What we have is not artificial, Livvie," he told her firmly.

"What we have is a lie," she returned coolly. "Started on a lie, built on a lie, enduring on a lie and now, if you carry on with your bulls.h.i.+t, Sebring, ending on a lie. Now I think you've had your fun with me, I've definitely had my fill of you, so please, get the f.u.c.k out of my house right the f.u.c.k now."

"Babe, plea-"

He stopped that time because, with no warning, she charged him. Slamming her hands into his chest and shoving hard, he heard her cry out in pain and whip one hand down before she retreated just as quickly as she came at him. She did this lifting an arm and raking her fingers through her hair so hard it was like she was tearing at it.

And she did all of this shouting, "Can you just stop? Can you just please G.o.d stop?" She shook her head, her eyes brightening with wet. "I can't take anymore. I can't take anymore. No more lies. No more schemes. No more using. No more orders. No more bulls.h.i.+t. No more! I cannot...take...anymore! G.o.d!" She tore her hand through her hair again. "I need you to go!"

"Livvie, f.u.c.k me, baby, please come here. Please listen to me," he begged.

Her eyes locked to his and at the look in hers, Nick's lungs hollowed out.

"I believed," she whispered.

"Let me come to you," he pleaded urgently.

"You made me believe," she accused.

"You know how it started," he replied immediately. "And I can't deny that, baby. I can't deny that, my Livvie. I f.u.c.ked up. So many times, I told myself I needed to come clean with you. Too many f.u.c.king times. I couldn't do it. I knew it'd hurt you. I couldn't do it. But you know it now, so why would I be here trying to convince you I'm in love with you if I wasn't in love with you?"

"I don't know," she shot back, also immediately. "Why would you watch me for years? Plant bugs in the warehouse and listen to everything? Why would you own the club without telling me? Why would you sleep with me knowing my father ordered your girlfriend's and your murder? Why would you pretend to begin caring about me when you knew that, nearly every day, I saw the man who carried out that order?"

"I loved her," he shared.

She flinched but didn't miss a beat.

"I can imagine, planning for years to avenge her. She must have been something."

"Liv-"

"I don't believe anymore, Sebring."

"Ba-"

"You want me to believe you care? Even a little bit?" she asked, but didn't wait for him to jump on it, she quickly finished, "Then leave."

In desperation, unable to remain cautious, he moved to her. She moved with him, retreating around the room with each step he took. He didn't speed up, he didn't get aggressive, but he didn't let up.

And he did all this saying, "First, we gotta see to that eye. Then I'll give you some time on your own to wrap your head around this s.h.i.+t and calm down. I'm not leaving, but I'll give you s.p.a.ce. You calm down, you let me talk to you, you actually listen to me, I'll get you to see more clearly what's happening here."

"I ask for one thing, even that you won't do," she pointed out. Having put the couch between them, she stopped. "It's over, Sebring."

s.h.i.+t, f.u.c.k, f.u.c.k.

"It's not over, Liv. I'm in love with you."

"It's over, Sebring."

"And you're in love with me too."

"You mean something to me," she stated and at that, his lungs started burning. They iced over when she finished, "But so did Tommy."

"Liv-"

And that was when it happened.

Defeat slid stark all over her. It was in her face. Her eyes. The line of her frame. It was so extreme, he could feel it in air and taste it in his throat.

"Can't you see you're killing me?" she whispered.

He swallowed past his throat closing and whispered back, "I can't leave you."

"You can't stay either."

"We're not done."

"We never even started."

"Baby, we did."

"It isn't for me," she stated.

"What isn't for you?"

"Dawn."

Beyond tweaked, that word made him more so.

"Dawn?"

"I live in dark. Dawn never comes for me. There will be no new day where I wake up complete. Happy. Loved. There is no other side to make my way to. There is no believe. It just isn't for me."

"I can take you there."

"No you can't, Sebring. Can't you see?"

"No, I can't see, Livvie."

"You can't give me dawn and all I can give you is dark."

"That's f.u.c.ked up and not true."

"It's every day for thirty-one years, except a few, the few I shared with you, and they were all a lie."

"Livvie-"