Run Posy Run (Underboss Insurrection, #1)

by Cate C. Wells

This is how life goes. Delusion and then disappointment and despair. I want to sink to the floor.

I’ve been here before. I’ve been ghosted, slow faded, two-timed, dumped, and kicked to the curb enough times to know the drill.

You’re a smart girl, Posy Santoro. You’ve got a good heart and you’re not afraid of hard work. Keep your head up. You’ll be fine.

I’ve been alone before. I’ve been called names. I’ve been cast off. But I am smart. I will be fine.

I’m drifting, and there’s nothing stopping me from floating on forever. No one will miss me. No one will even wonder where I went. I’m a loose end.

I’d undo the damage if I knew how. I don’t need her to pretend. I like her raw feelings—all of them. They turn me on. That’s what makes her different from every other person in the world.

I know her perfectly. Better than she knows herself. She’s a tangled ball of self-doubt, foolish pride, dumb hope, brilliance, masochism, and blind affection. And I’m obsessed. I need her back.

I want her closer. If she were in my arms, I wouldn’t feel this—empty-handedness.

I didn’t like it when she was gone, and knowing that she’s upstairs in my bed is unaccountably…pleasing.

Now, I want. I want Posy to wake up. I want to know what she’s thinking. I want to pick up what I broke and fit the pieces back together until she’s exactly the way she was—but I want her to still see me like she does now. The way I truly am.

I can recognize feelings, but only Posy’s are real. Only Posy’s matter.

Posy Santoro isn’t in my system. She burst into life in my empty shell and made it into something. She is my system. Maybe I didn’t understand that before I lost her. I’m a man. I can be a cliché. Still, it’s true, and I know it now, ever since the moment I caught her. I don’t just get off on what she is—I need it.

He thinks to take what’s mine? And his rats, scurrying to do his bidding, equally blind to the fact that they continue to exist because I don’t prefer otherwise? I think it’s time to clean house. Who told him?

It always boggles my mind—how people see what they think is there.

“To the contrary.” His eyes darken. “You decimate my control. If you run again, if you make me angry enough, I could kill you. I might not even mean to.”

It’s unfair that you can grieve a person who never existed, the loss of a love you made up in your head. But then again, life’s unfair.

I always thought falling for the wrong man would be my downfall—like it was for my mom. Maybe it’s worse if the wrong man falls for you.

“I like that you need me. It drove me crazy when you didn’t anymore.”

Posy. My fingers curl around the smooth metal arm rests. “It would be a catastrophic mistake if anyone were to try and take her from me.”

“If anyone harms a hair on her head, I will bring it all down. There will be nothing left.”

She’s trying to conceal it, but there’s real hurt in her voice. I didn’t appreciate what I was going to be walking into this morning. She’s—upset.

Her vulnerability slams me in the chest. She’s as fragile as spun glass. She can run, and as weak as she is, she can take blow after blow. But her feelings—they’re so tender, so easily bruised. She allows herself to be crushed, over and over again. Is it masochism? Whatever, it’s the irony of my life. The only person whose feelings I care about, and she’s the equivalent of an emotional eggshell.

“So you care about me?” “I’d die for you. Kill for you.”