Chapter 80 Delilah #2
“I remember everything. I remember how you woke me up, how you promised to beg for my forgiveness. I’m in a merciful mood, so strip yourself bare for me to grant it.” I slowly push my hand under his hoodie and trail my fingers up his ribs. “You’ve seen all of my scars, Kane. Show me yours.”
The air is pushed out of my lungs as he drops his full weight on me, trapping me under him with my arm awkwardly bent. Burying his face in my neck, he whispers, “I don’t want you to be repulsed by me.”
“Never,” I promise, kissing his shoulder.
I don’t think he’s going to move until he abruptly turns on his back, swings his legs over the bed, then sits up, facing the window. His breathing is harsh as he lifts his hips, roughly pulling his sweats down, kicking them off his feet. But removing his hoodie is slower.
I kneel at his back, waiting for him to move. Shuffling my knees back, I lower my head as I slowly peel the hem of his hoodie up, allowing my lips to meet his bare skin. I don’t remove it fully, only enough so he knows I’m not going anywhere.
New scars cut through the tattoos on his back, some deep and distorting the ink, others thick and raised. His chest quakes as he takes in a deep breath before clumsily pulling his right arm through his sleeve. I follow the exposed skin with my lips until I reach his shoulder then wait.
I’m not going to help him unless he asks me to.
Or once he’s comfortable, we can go back to the normal expectation of crazed undressing.
Right now, he has to want to show me. Wrapping my arms around him, I flatten my hands on his abs so he can see I’m not forcing him or running away, but I can feel the scars rippling over his muscles.
He leans forward to pull his hoodie off his head then drags it down, so it covers from his left elbow down. With my lips on his shoulder, I whisper, “I’m not going anywhere. I love you, baby.”
“Why?” he whispers back, even lower.
I rest my chin on his shoulder, pressing our cheeks together.
“Because you’ve never taken more than I willingly gave you—as yourself.
All I have ever wanted is to give you all of me.
Even when you hated me, you cared about me.
You could have slit my throat in my sleep, but you let me sleep on your chest. You could have turned your back on me, but you found me.
It’s always been you, Kane. In my head, my heart, where it matters, it’s you. ”
He drags in a pained breath as he closes his eyes.
“I love you,” I say softly. “It doesn’t matter how you look or what you’ve done, I love you. Selfishly, hopelessly, and damned. Maybe I should hate you for everything, but the truth is I don’t blame you when I know how manipulation and abuse alter a person.”
There’s a lump in my throat, preventing me from bringing up that I know what he’s been through.
If someone told me my dreams were real before I remembered for myself, I would have run further away from the truth.
I can’t force him to speak about something when he’s not ready.
It’s not even needed when everything else we’ve been through is so horrific that he—Ghost—doesn’t make the top ten list of worst shit to happen to me.
He’s fully entwined in every good, honest moment of my life.
He’s never asked for me to forgive him, ignored his wrongs, or framed them as being righteous.
True remorse is changed actions, which he’s doing every day without me asking him.
It may be toxic or fucked up, unhealthy beyond measure, but Kane is the first and only person I’ve ever chosen. There’s no one else who’s safe for me. When he was pretending to be Asher, I never felt safe, but when he was an angry, anonymous stalker, I did.
Tilting his head without opening his eyes, he pulls the hoodie away, uncovering the red marks from his healing skin that has been stitched together to form a rounded edge. I hug him tighter as I ask, “Does it hurt?”
He slowly shakes his head as I wrap my legs around him, so my calves are between his spread legs. My fucked up right leg is there with his left arm. It’s not the same because I still have the limb, but I kiss his neck to get him to open his eyes.
“I thought I was going to lose my leg,” I whisper as he massages down my thigh. “It’s the most pain I’ve ever been in. Lenny—”
“Where the fuck was he?” Kane snaps his eyes open, full of rage.
“Kane, he’s you. You don’t understand the things he’s done to protect us, but this world is all he knows, so he’s stuck too while trying to protect as many people as possible.
” He’s about to argue with me but I can’t allow Lennox to be hated for something that’s not his fault.
“Lenny is all I had. He was there when Luna was born, he was there every time Helene would punish me. He took them for me.” My tears burn a hot path down my cheeks at the reminder of the blank look in Lennox’s eyes when he would go to the basement.
I shouldn’t have followed him, but I was curious.
“Don’t hate him when he doesn’t have anyone.
He tried to find you after Rowan gave an order for you to be killed. ”
I hug him tighter as I cry despite the way he turns rigid. Staring through the window, he runs his tongue on the back of his teeth before stiffly saying, “You’re talking like you love him.”
“I do. I’ve never had an uncle before, and he was kind to me. He told me to run away, came up with the plans himself, but I knew if I did, you wouldn’t be able to find me.”
“You love him like an uncle?” His voice changes to the bitter one he uses when I catch him talking to himself.
I nod. “They have the woman he loves, and they had you, so we understood each other. He took photos of my bump growing to show you.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, Lenny was going to record the birth if you didn’t come back in time, so you didn’t miss anything. But I got sick, and she was too small.”
His heart slows as he asks, “Did you pick the name together?”
“No. I picked it when I saw her. The day they told us you were dead was the quietest he’d ever been. He sat on the roof for days, grieving you.”
It marked the change because he kept telling me to run after that.
But it’s a lie, all of it is a lie. My baby isn’t though, and I carefully demand, “I’m going with you when you kill Helene.
” Twisting to straddle his thighs, I hold his left elbow, lifting his arm higher to press my lips above the healing incisions.