Broken Kiss (a Teen Wolf story)

Part 19

            His eyes were wild, but it wasn’t with the black madness she’d seen from him before. It was more like...panic.

            “Peter.” She took a step toward him, then jerked to a halt when he tore chunks out of the table.

            “Don’t…come…any…closer.” The words grated out of him.

            The boxer crowded against Lydia, a cold presence at her side, but when he reached out to pull her back, she stepped aside his suddenly-solid arm.

            “Why not?” she asked.

            “It’s all coming back to me. All of it.” He rubbed at his chest, digging in until his claws sliced ribbons from his shirt. Blood beaded in the scratches beneath. He didn’t seem to notice, his head low. “And I can’t…contain it. It’s too much. I need to leave.”

            “No.” Lydia stalked right up to him, trembling even as she raised her chin in challenge. “Not now. Not after all this time.”

            “You don’t understand.”

            “I was there. I know exactly what happened and I know exactly what you should be feeling right now. Guilt.”

            His eyes locked on hers. His had gone neon blue. Beneath them, his teeth were sharpening, elongating. He touched her cheek, leaving behind a thin streak of blood.

            “I’m not sorry,” he said, but there was a petulance to the insistence. It was a childish denial, a refusal to admit to the truth that everybody knew. “In the end, what I did helped you.”

            “I was born a banshee,” she said, ignoring the spirits calling at her to stop. The man in front of her was more than half monster and had haunted the worst of her nightmares for months. But if she stopped now, she’d never be able to tell him and she needed to. Carrying the pain he’d caused had diminished her, but he was right. She was more, now. “My abilities would have come out eventually. You can say whatever you want, but you know the truth. You used me because you thought I would keep you strong. You gambled on your greed, and I was the one who paid the price. You hurt me because you wanted everybody in the world to hurt alongside you. And you kept at it because, if you stopped, you’d have to face what you’d done. Why do you want to make it worse? Why do you want me to keep hurting?”

            His head swung back and forth. “Lydia, stop. I can’t feel this. I can’t.”

            She crossed her arms. “You don’t get to play the feelings card.”

            “I’m not playing,” he shouted, the growl reverberating through the small space.

            A cold fissure went through Lydia. He wasn’t trustworthy. He could snap and end her life in the matter of a moment. He could. He almost had once already.  But she needed to know.

            “What did I do to deserve you, Peter Hale?”

            “You brought me back.” His hand clamped against her side, fingers digging roughly into the grooves his teeth had left in her flesh. “You brought me back and, when you did, you changed me. Everything I ever did was out of necessity, but now that you’ve gotten under my skin, half the things I’ve done feel wrong. Half the things I think, half the things I want…wrong. You got inside of my head and made me want to be good, Lydia.”

            He spun her around, and she crashed against the wall. She touched his shoulder, and he caught her hand and stretched it over her head. Very deliberately, she stroked her other hand up his chest, shivering when he shuddered. He grabbed her wrist and pressed that arm against the wall. Jackson used to hold her in place until she stopped trying to get loose. He’d smirk at her, so pleased with his strength over her.

            Peter’s eyes never left hers, as if he were searching for answers. And he wasn’t smiling. He looked anguished. His upper lip had curled over canines that slid up and down, like his body couldn’t handle the emotions seething inside of him.

            “What’s wrong with being good?” she murmured.

            “You shouldn’t have the power to make me feel bad about the things I’ve done. That isn’t natural.”

            “Wouldn’t you rather do things that don’t hurt to think about?”

            The heat of his breath touched her ear and the rest of her body heated in response. He was so close, pressed against her, his body hard and tight with muscle and aggression.

            “I will never be a good man, Lydia.” The declaration lacked his usual confidence, but it was a statement. He believed it, and that’s why he wouldn’t admit to the guilt. Because he knew that, once he started, he’d never be able to stop piling it up.          

            And who was she to judge? The things she’d stooped to, before she’d known about werewolves and ley lines and freaking nemetons, weren’t anything to be proud of. She’d pretended she was all that, while shame at being revealed for what she was had made her act more and more ridiculous. At least things were honest between her and Peter. Fucked up but honest.

             “So then.” She licked her lips, and arched up, pressing herself against him. “Be bad. Be yourself.”