My glass was half full. Whiskey. The kind that resembles love. Burns you right down to the core of your guts all while discreetly destroying other bodily organs in the process. Love was a distraction to destruction. Nothing more, and nothing less. My knee wouldn’t stop jiggling and my palms started to sweat. I simply wanted to fucking kill someone. The room was too loud. The music too fucking messy. Even the band playing looked like they were three seconds away from OD’ing on coke. This wasn’t what I expected at all from Ruby La Rosa. Do I even still know her? I don’t have to know her to still love her. I was fucked the second she sank her poisonous fangs right into my jugular.

“Look, if it’s any consolation, she looks happy, right?” Poppy leaned into me, resting her head on my shoulder. Lights pulsed rapidly to the music, and I watched as her hand slowly lowered down his arm, resting in the palm of his hand.

My thumb twitched. I rolled my heavy steel ring around and around like a dial that controlled my temper and it was about to conflagrate.

“Happy?” I turned to face Poppy, ignoring everyone else around the table, including the owner of the hand that’s resting on my upper thigh beside me. “You and I both know that is not her happy. That is her…” I paused, reclining against my chair and resting my arm on the one beside me. “That is revenge.”

Jade interrupted across the table. The centerpiece was excessive, so I could only see the outline of her face. “That is no choice.”

Whacking away the grabby hands from below, I stood up from my chair, finishing my whiskey.

“Where are you going?” Khaos whined from beside Royce. I ignored all of them. Moving to the other side of the room, I strolled past Victor. The closer she got, the more I needed to fucking obliterate something. Preferably her.

One step.

Two.

Three.

I brushed past her just as her back was about to rub against my chest, our eyes colliding. Seconds passed before I finally dragged them away from her and headed through the back of the room, where an exit sign flashed above the door. Instantly, the cold air wrapped its frosty fingers around my throat as I shoved the door open. The fucking suffocation of everyone in that room.

Of her in any room.

“What is it? Is something wrong?” Her voice was like a flame that continued to burn too close no matter how much I tried to blow it out.

I reached around her little body and forced the emergency door closed behind her.

“Wicked!” She spun around, pushing on the door again before turning back to me. “You did that on purpose.” A glare flashed across her fiery honey-colored eyes. “Why? Why do you fucking do this and make it harder on both of us?”