Grey Clouds On The Horizon

Boarderline Betrayal

Christian's POV

I allowed my sore eyes a few moments to adjust to the sight before me. It was, without a doubt, Miss  Stewart. There was no way of mistaking anyone else for her when my initials so clearly rested over her nearly blinded eye. I'd known, professionally, she wore makeup on the lid and a colored contact over her ruined iris. Then to see that in her personal life she felt no need to hide my brand... it was nearly too much to take. 

Scanning her up and down, resisting the instinctual urge to undress her in the process, I saw blatant differences where I'd expected them to be subtle. Her hips were widened with womanhood but her precariously picked out wardrobe hung much looser than before. Even in the months prior, when I'd watched her from the distance in a Dallas bar, she'd had at least fifteen pounds more weight on her. To think that, while my Anastasia was wasting away, my Emilia was as well nearly broke me.

But she wasn't mine. I could see that. Her wrist donned a hard shell black brace and bruises patched her beach goddess skin. Someone else owned her. Someone much more sadistic than I'd ever been. 

Em reached her good hand out at me and I gripped it, despite wondering if I would pull the wisp of a woman down on to the floor with me. "Come on, get up. I'm not having this conversation with you sitting on a bathroom floor."

It took a bit of leaning on her part but she pulled my buzzed body off of the tile and helped position me back in the chair I'd lived nearly the last month in. I reached out to her, unable to fight the urge to make sure she was real. My hand rested on her waist, one of the zones that was absolutely off limits outside of a scene, and felt the tension of a brace under her clothes as well. 

My look to her was of piercing desperation and she shook her head. "This isn't about me."

"Like hell it's not." I put tried to look at her as if she was anything other that shattered and I couldn't see it. "I haven't seen you for three years and now you're here and... Just look at you! Who did this? Who is hurting you?"

"No one," Emilia flashed her actress smile that charmed thousands but I could see right through. 

I shook my head. "That's a fucking lie. I'll get Taylor. We'll help you."

She stood up taller, wincing in the effort, to assert her will. I knew because it was my trick. "No. I'm here to help you."

"I don't need help."

She pursed her lips and leaned against the wall in a way that was purely her own. "That's bullshit, Grey."

"Excuse you?!" My voice raised and I felt the anger bubble within me. It was easy in the guilt of my memories to forget how infuriating this girl could be when she had a job to do. The instinct to throw her over my knee and beat her with my belt was so ingrained in my psyche that I had to hold myself in my chair.

"You heard me." She grit her teeth in defiance. "That is complete and total bullshit. You are drunk in your wife's hospital room while she's in a coma and carrying your baby. Do you have any shame at all?"

The tightness returned to my throat that had become a familiar friend since the first day Ana's stomach emptied before me. There were daggers at my disposal that I couldn't resist the urge to throw at a my most tempting target. "You carried my baby and I let you turn into this. A fucking addict and some psychopath's whore!" I reached out and pushed a bit too harshly into a bruise below her eye that was so dark I couldn't tell where her the mark ended and her wide eyes began. 

It took her a few moments to recover her breath. "Shut up and let me fix you." Em's compassion leaked into her sentence and I knew that somewhere within her battered body was the girl I'd trained to set the world on fire.