Even as she's hating him, Lita is drinking James in. He's bloody and broken and beautiful in a way that it's hard to look at him. He's hurting her so bad but she can't avert her eyes, not when it might be the last time. She wants to remember him as the rogue she first clapped eyes on, all golden and windswept, looking like the best mistake she could ever make. As the proud teacher with the roving hands, his face alight in triumph when she finally hit that bottle back in the cavern. As the boy that pressed her against that bookshelf, bold and shameless and hers. As the man that asked her to be his lady and Lita thinking there wasn't anything on God's green earth that would ever stop her from saying yes. She doesn't want to remember him, remember them, like this. But she will. Even as its killing her it's the last thing of his she can take with her.
Lita had thought James was so damn smart. Not only intuitive and street-wise but well-read and intelligent. Yet here he was, speaking words and feelings she cannot fathom and missing the most basic of points she'd laid at his feet. He's not only a coward, he's an idiot too. She hears the earnest strain in his voice, trying to make her see but she doesn't. Not when he's so willfully blind to the problem that is too big, too important to ignore.
"But that's just it, isn't it?" Lita asks but it's not a question. "It all comes down to trust in the end. You didn't trust me to know my own head, my own heart. Like I'm too stupid to know the difference between what's good, what's right, and what needs to be done. I make those decisions every damn day, James. I have more blood on my hands than you ever will. I'm not here to absolve you. You're a sinner, same as me. But unlike you, I never had the balls to pretend like I was a saint."
Lita steps back; she needs the space. They're breathing the same air and it doesn't feel there's enough for the both of them. Every inhale feels strangled, every exhale threatens to come out as a sob. Her arms cross over her chest; a pitiful suit of armor against the pain.
"Do you think some made-up title means something to me?" She looks at him sideways, trying to see him as more than a man, to see him as the legend they made him out to be. All she sees is the man that holds her heart in his bloody hands and it only makes it worse.
"As if a banner, leather jacket full of patches, and a camp full of followers makes any damn difference of how I see you? How I feel about you? I could call myself a queen but doesn't make me one and it sure as hell doesn't make you my king. You don't get to make my decisions for me."
She blinks before she stop herself and a hot, angry tear trails down her cheek. Lita wipes it away, smearing the blood and makeup on her face like warpaint. She looks down at her wet hand, horrified. It takes her several moments before she can stand to look at James but when she does her gaze does not leave his and her voice does not waver.