Chapter 15 Jinx #2
"It's an observation. A scientific one." Even now, even dying, she can't stop being clinical. "You broke free because you had something I couldn't account for. Something I tried to burn out of every subject but could never quite eradicate."
"What's that?"
"Love." She says the word like it's a foreign language. "The capacity to love persisted in you despite everything. It was a flaw in my design. A weakness I should have eliminated more aggressively."
"It's not a weakness." I grab her throat, feel her pulse hammering under my palm. "It's the only thing that makes us human. And it's why I'm going to win. Because I have people to fight for. Something beyond myself. You have nothing but data and dead children."
I start squeezing.
Her hands come up, the broken fingers useless, unable to pry at my grip. Her feet kick weakly against the floor. Her eyes bulge, capillaries bursting, red spreading through the whites like ink in water.
"You spent your life taking breath from children," I say. "Now I'm taking yours."
She convulses. Her mouth opens and closes, gasping for air that doesn't come. Her body fights for survival even as her brain begins to shut down.
I hold on.
I hold on until the light leaves her eyes.
I hold on until she goes limp.
I hold on until I'm absolutely certain that Helena Cross is dead.
Then I keep holding on, just to be sure.
When I finally let go, she slumps in her chair, head lolling, eyes open and empty. Blood and tears and snot dry on her ruined face. Her broken fingers rest in her lap like dead spiders.
It's over.
Thirty years of nightmares, thirty years of wondering if I'd ever escape what she made me, and it ends like this. Not with a bang. Not with catharsis. Just a body and the slow realization that killing her doesn't change anything.
I'm still broken. Still fucked up. Still carrying the scars of everything she did.
But she's dead, and the children are safe.
I look at my hands. They're shaking. Covered in her blood. The hands that killed F7 on Helena's orders. The hands that have killed so many people since.
The hands that Asher holds when I can't sleep.
I should feel something. Triumph, maybe. Or satisfaction. Or at least relief.
Instead, I feel hollow.
I wipe my hands on her suit, smearing blood across the expensive fabric. One final indignity. One final reminder that she was never as untouchable as she believed.
Then I walk out of the office without looking back.
The safe house is quiet when we return.
The children are gone, loaded onto the charter, flying toward Geneva and whatever passes for safety in this world. Jace went with them. Marlee too, despite her injuries—a gash on her forehead and a sprained wrist from the girl who attacked her. She refused to stay behind.
That leaves me and Asher, alone in a motel by the hour.
I'm sitting on the edge of a cot, still wearing clothes stiff with dried blood. Helena's blood. Some of it from her face. Some from her throat. All of it deserved.
I should feel something. Triumph, maybe. Or satisfaction. Or at least relief.
Instead, I feel hollow.
Asher comes in from the other room, two bottles of water in his hands. He looks as tired as I feel, dark circles under his eyes, beard shadowing his jaw. But his eyes are soft when he looks at me. Concerned.
"Hey." He sits beside me, hands me a bottle. "How are you holding up?"
"I killed her."
"I know."
"Made it hurt. Like you said."
"I know." He doesn't flinch. Doesn't judge. Just sits there, warm and solid and present. "Do you want to talk about it?"
"No." I crack open the water, take a long drink. My throat is raw, scratchy. I don't remember screaming, but I must have. "I want to stop thinking. I want to feel something other than this."
"Other than what?"
"Empty." I set down the bottle, turn to face him. "I spent my whole life waiting for that moment. Building toward it. And now it's over and I don't know what comes next. I don't know who I am without her to hate."
Asher reaches out, cups my face in his hands. His thumb traces a line up and down on my cheek.
"You're Jinx Harrison. You're a survivor. You're someone who just saved a bunch of kids from becoming what you almost became." His thumb strokes across my cheekbone. "You're the man I love. That's who you are."
"Is that enough?"
"It's all I got."
He kisses me. Soft at first, gentle, the kind of kiss you give someone who's fragile. But I don't want gentle. I want to feel. I want to drown out the hollow ache in my chest with something real, something physical, something that proves I'm still alive.
I grab his shirt and pull him closer, deepen the kiss, turn it into something hungry.
"Are you sure?"
"I need you." The words come out rough, desperate. "I need to feel something that isn't this. Please."
He searches my face. Whatever he sees there makes him nod.
"Okay. Whatever you need."
He pushes me back onto the cot, covers my body with his.
The weight of him is grounding, solid, an anchor in the storm that's been raging inside me since I walked into that office.
His mouth finds my throat, my collarbone, the hollow above my heart.
He kisses each scar he passes, each mark of what I've survived, like he's mapping the history written on my skin.
His hands work at my clothes, stripping away the blood-stiff fabric, baring my skin to the cold air. The shirt sticks where Helena's blood has dried, and he peels it away carefully, tenderly, like he's unwrapping something precious rather than damaged.
I do the same to him. Shirt off, pants off, until we're pressed together, naked and wanting. His cock is hard against my hip, and I reach down to wrap my hand around him, stroke him slow and steady.
"Jinx." He groans into my mouth. "What do you need?"
"Fuck me until there’s nothing left."
He flips me onto my stomach, presses me down into the thin mattress. The cot groans under our weight. A cap clicks, and slick fingers press between my legs, working me open with efficiency rather than tenderness. One finger, then two, stretching me fast, preparing me for what's coming.
It burns. The stretch is just this side of too much, the pressure bordering on pain. I welcome it. Pain means I'm alive. Pain means I can feel something other than the ache that's been eating me from the inside.
"Ready?" His voice is rough, strained with holding back.
"Yes. Fuck, yes. Stop being careful with me."
He positions himself, the blunt head of his cock pressing against me. he hesitates, and I push back, taking the first inch myself.
"I said stop being careful, give me the pain, I need it."
He pushes inside in one long thrust, burying himself to the hilt.
I groan into the pillow, fingers clawing at the sheets.
He's thick and hard and exactly what I need, filling me up, splitting me open, driving out everything else.
There's no room for grief when he's inside me.
No room for emptiness. No room for Helena's dead eyes or the sound of her screams or the wet crunch of her fingers breaking.
Just sensation, overwhelming and immediate and real.
He starts to move. Slow at first, letting me adjust, but I don't want slow.
"Harder," I demand. "Fuck me like you’re the only thing tethering me to Earth."
He gives me harder. His hips slam against my ass, over and over. His hands grip my hips hard enough to bruise, fingers digging into the muscle, leaving marks that I'll feel for days. His breath comes in harsh grunts against my ear, animal and desperate.
The cot creaks beneath us, threatening to collapse. The metal frame scrapes against the floor with every thrust. Neither of us slows down.
"More," I gasp. "Give me more."
He pulls out, flips me onto my back, shoves my legs up over his shoulders and drives back in. The angle is deeper, more intense, hitting the spot inside me that makes my vision white out, makes my cock throb against my stomach.
"Look at me." His voice is raw. "Jinx, look at me."
I open my eyes. His face is above mine, flushed and sweating, his eyes dark with want but also with something else. Concern. Love. The desperate need to make this good for me, to give me what I need.
"I've got you, sweet pea" he says. "I'm right here. I’ll take the pain away, baby, let me carry it."
He starts moving again, and this time there's rhythm to it. Deep, steady strokes that build the pressure in my balls, that coil tighter and tighter until I'm shaking with the need to come.
"Asher." His name is a plea. "Please. I'm close."
He wraps his hand around my cock, strokes me in time with his thrusts. The dual sensation is almost too much, pleasure crashing over me in waves, drowning out everything else.
"Come, keep your eyes on me, let me watch your soul come back.”
I come. Hard. My vision whites out, my back arches off the cot, my cock pulses in his hand, spilling across my stomach and chest. The orgasm tears through me, shatters me, leaves me gasping and trembling in its wake.
He follows seconds later. Buries himself deep and comes, his cock pulsing inside me, flooding me with heat. His body shudders, his face contorting with pleasure, and then he collapses onto me, heavy and warm and real.
We lie there. Panting. Sweating. Still connected. His heart pounds against my chest, gradually slowing, matching its rhythm to mine.
Then the tears come.
I don't expect them. Don't want them. But they come anyway, spilling down my cheeks, soaking into the thin pillow beneath my head.
A sob tears out of my throat, ugly and broken, and suddenly I'm crying in earnest. Thirty years of grief and rage and terror, all of it pouring out at once, all the things I've never let myself feel because feeling was weakness and weakness was death.
"Hey." Asher pulls out, gently, and gathers me into his arms. "Hey, it's okay. It’s okay, you’re safe."
"I'm sorry." The words come out broken, barely recognizable. "I don't know why—I can't—"
"You don't have to apologize. You don't have to explain." He pulls me against his chest, strokes my hair, holds me while I fall apart. "You just killed the woman who destroyed your childhood. That's not nothing. It's okay to feel it. It's okay to grieve."
"Grieve?" I choke out a laugh that's half sob. "I hated her. I wanted her dead."
"And you can still grieve what she took from you. The childhood you should have had. The person you might have been if she'd never touched you." His arms tighten around me. "Those things matter. That loss matters. You're allowed to mourn it."
"I thought I'd feel free." I'm ugly crying now, snot and tears mixing on my face. "I thought killing her would fix something. Would make me whole. But I still feel broken. I still feel like I'm what she made me."
"You're not." His voice is fierce and he forces me to look at him, his eyes filled with certainty and rage and love and everything I don’t deserve. "You're what you chose to be. Every day, every decision, every moment you chose kindness over cruelty, love over fear—that's you. Not her. You."
"Then why do I still feel like this?"
"Because healing takes longer than killing." He presses his lips to my forehead, holds them there, breathing me in. "But you're not alone. You don't have to carry this by yourself anymore. I'm here. I'm not going anywhere. Not ever."
I cling to him like he's the only solid thing in a world that's crumbling around me. The tears don't stop, but they change. Less desperate. Less raw. More like release. More like letting go.
She's dead. The children are safe. And I have someone who loves me despite everything I am. Everything I've done.
Maybe that's not enough to fix me. Maybe nothing ever will be. Maybe I'll carry the scars of the Foundry for the rest of my life, invisible wounds that never fully heal.
But it's a start.
And right now, held in Asher's arms, his heartbeat steady against my ear, his skin warm against mine, that start feels like everything.
"I love you," I whisper against his chest.
"I love you too. My fuck, do I ever." He pulls me closer, impossibly closer, like he's trying to absorb me into himself. "Now rest. We've got a long flight tomorrow."
"The children?"
"Safe. On their way to Geneva. Jace and Marlee are with them. Now sleep, sweet pea.”
Sweet pea is growing on me… My eyes close as he murmurs affirmations in my ear, his arms tight around me, warding off the demons who try to infiltrate my mind as sleep claims me.