Ruthless Regret (Ruthless Games Duology #2)

Chapter 16

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

ASHLEY

I give up trying to sleep at around four. I’m too scared to close my eyes, in case I dream again, and every single noise has my senses on high alert. So, I get up. The house is dark and quiet as I creep along the hallway to the kitchen. Making sure the door is closed, I make myself a cup of cocoa, and sit at the table, trying to focus on the things I need to do once everyone wakes up.

I need to buy a new cell phone.

I need to call the landlord.

I need to replace my driver’s license.

I also need to decide whether I want to try and get my job back. It’s only been a couple of days, I doubt they’ll have already filled the position. But I’m not sure I want to go back to it. It was part of a life I was forcing myself to live. I was playing pretend, like a kid playing dress up.

It might have only been a few days since my world turned upside down, but I’ve changed a lot in that time … and I don’t think I can return to the person I was.

I stare into my mug, the steam curling up in the dim light of the kitchen. It feels surreal sitting here, thinking about how different everything is now. How different I am.

It’s not just that my life has been turned upside down. It’s that I no longer recognize the person I was before all this happened. My job, the house I share with my friends, my routine. It feels like it was someone else’s life. Or maybe a role I was cast into, but one that no longer fits quite right.

I can’t go back to it.

The thought shocks me with its finality. There’s no pretending anymore. No slipping back into the version of myself I tried so hard to maintain for all these years. That girl—the one who followed all the rules, who stayed under the radar, who avoided anything that might stir up trouble? She’s gone.

But if that’s true, then who the hell am I now?

I wrap my hands tighter around the mug. The nightmare still clings to me. I can still hear the masked man’s heavy breathing, feel his grip tightening around me, the gleam of the knife in the dim light. Zain’s voice.

Zain .. .

I squeeze my eyes shut, willing thoughts of him away. But that just makes things worse. I don’t know what to think about him. About what he’s done.

About what we did.

There were moments, just brief flashes after we had sex, of a different version of the man I’d married. Something raw and broken inside him. And it mirrors what I feel.

I don’t hate him. I don’t hate him the way I should. The way I want to.

Despite all the things he’s done to me since being released from prison, despite the manipulation and threats, I can’t shake the feeling that maybe … just maybe, he’s as lost as I am.

And that thought terrifies me more than anything else.

I don’t want to understand him. I don’t want to see him beyond the man who forced me into a marriage to punish me.

I want to carry on hating him. I want to hold on to the anger I’ve carried for years. It would be so much easier that way. To continue to cast him as the villain in my story, and walk away with a clear conscience.

But I can’t help it. Because I know … I know that Zain is the bigger victim in what happened all those years ago.

How can I hate him when I know he’s not the true villain?

He’s the victim. Of what happened all those years ago. Of the twisted justice system that threw him in prison.

But it’s not that simple.

And it’s not even true.

I’m the villain in his story.

A new realization hits me hard.

I didn’t just ruin his life. I ruined mine too.

We’re both broken. Both trapped in this endless cycle of blame and anger.

I put the mug back onto the table, and lean back in the chair, scrubbing a hand down my face.

I don’t want to acknowledge the fact that there’s so much more to him than the anger and bitterness that have defined our interactions so far.

But I can’t ignore it either.

A soft creak from the hallway beyond the door startles me, and I look around. The door is still closed, but the silence in the house feels more oppressive now, forcing me to acknowledge that I’m the only one awake.

I need to get out of my own head.

I walk over to the sink and rinse my mug. The warm water running over my fingers grounds me, pulling me back to the here and now, to the things I can control.

I might not be able to control Zain’s behavior, or what happened between us, but I can control what I choose to do next.

I mentally tick off the list of things I need to deal with. The phone, the landlord, the drivers license. All things that can be handled easily. It’s the rest of it that’s the problem.

I stare blindly down at the sink, my thoughts tying me up in knots, reminding me of everything I’ve been avoiding. Every decision I’ve been too scared to face.

But I can’t avoid it anymore.

The truth is there, hovering just beneath the surface, waiting for me to acknowledge it.

Everything in my life right now circles back to Zain. He’s like a storm that keeps pulling me in, no matter how hard I try to resist.

I can’t keep running.

The thought echoes in my mind, louder and louder until it drowns out everything else.

I can’t keep running from what happened. I have to face it once and for all.

I lean against the counter.

What do I do now?

There’s no going back to the person I was before. That much is clear. The version of myself who buried her head in the sand, pretending life was neat and orderly, is gone. She crumbled the moment Zain bulldozed his way into my life, with all his bitterness and anger, forcing me to face a past I’ve spent years trying to forget.

But I also can’t move forward until I figure out what I’m supposed to do with this new version of myself. The one who doesn’t fit into the life I’ve built. The one who doesn’t know how to reconcile everything she’s feeling.

I don’t know who I am anymore .

The Ashley who pretended everything was fine, that her relationship with Scott was normal, who avoided conflict and attachments—she’s gone. But the Ashley who’s standing here now, alone in the dark, thinking about a man she’s supposed to hate, she’s still forming. She’s still trying to figure out where she fits in all of this.

Zain.

Every thought I have leads back to him. To the way he looked at me. The way his voice sounded when he wasn’t being the cold calculating bastard who forced me to marry him.

I push away from the counter, walk back to the table and sit down, so I can rest my head in my hands, and rub my temples. I keep trying to focus on anything but him, but new memories force their way through the self-guilt and confusion.

His touch, his kiss, the way his body felt against mine. It all rushes back in a flood of sensation that leaves me breathless. And beneath all of that, I remember his face. The vulnerability I saw in his eyes.

At that moment, I didn’t see the man who wanted to destroy me. I saw someone who was just as broken as I am.

I can’t pretend it didn’t happen. I can’t pretend that I didn’t feel something when he touched me, when he kissed me. It wasn’t anger or guilt. It definitely wasn’t love, but it was something , and it scared the hell out of me.