Chapter Forty-Four
Max
Cain honors the end of the deal… as does Ember. She gives him three safehouses of Dagon’s, all off-the-books, all ones Dagon never knew she discovered. She ranks them by priority, then points out that the number one option is far likeliest to be where he’ll find Azalea.
The only problem is, that location will be extremely difficult to get to, considering the government occasionally uses the place to dump people they need to disappear.
It’s not a government site, per se, but it is a dumping ground for individuals who are wiped off every grid and never seen or heard from again.
Cain leaves immediately to make preparations.
I stare at Ember from my place across the table from her, worried that she’s about to retreat inward again. But she doesn’t. She’s pensive, withdrawn, thoughtful, but not empty. I can work with anything aside from her emptiness.
“I never meant to let Dagon get his hands on you,” I say, breaking the silence. “I swear it, Flame. If you hadn’t—”
“I don’t care what you did and didn’t intend.” Her tone is harsh, but at least she’s talking to me.
“Ember, if you hadn’t fucking gone to him—”
“You made your plans. I made mine.” Her fingers absently graze the spot below her collarbone.
The spot where she actually sewed a razor blade into her skin. The sheer tenacity of this woman will never cease to amaze me. She did what she had to in order to achieve her desired outcome. Just as she did with Cain.
“You could’ve forced him to let you go,” I say carefully. “He would’ve relented eventually. Why didn’t you?”
She stands up. “I was promised my own room. I’d like to be taken there, now.”
“Right. About that. You didn’t give any specifics—you only said your own room. Not your own apartment. Not somewhere I wasn’t allowed. So.” I miss a beat. “There are two guestrooms for you to choose from. Of course, I’ll be in them alongside you—”
She drops back into her chair, jaw locking. “You always were a tricky motherfucker.”
If I were a Doberman, this is the part where my ears would perk up. Instead, my entire body shifts to face her.
She’s speaking with familiarity that wasn’t there before. Not after she remembered the necklace, or the kiss.
She’s remembered something else. I know it in my bones.
“When else have I been a tricky motherfucker?”
She shakes her head and seals her lips, unwilling to say anything else.
That’s not going to fucking work for me. If she remembers more, I deserve to know. I have to know.
“When else, Ember?” I make an effort to soften my tone. “Baby, please.”
It’s the please that seems to get her. “Always,” she says after a few moments.
“When you threatened the older siblings of my classmates to keep my peers in line. When you stayed up three nights in a row to help me study for the SATs and ACTs. The countless all-nighters we pulled on a call, even when you were only down the road, to make sure you’d gotten through your assigned reading or polished your essay.
” She looks at the floor. “You were always a tricky motherfucker, Maximus.”
My throat and eyes burn at the same time. My soul and heart feel like they soar, crash, then soar again, as if the center of my being can’t decide whether it wants to choose elation or agony.
Ember remembers. She remembers… and yet, she’s still distant. She’s not here, in my arms, where I’d kill for her to be. Where I’d burn worlds, bend morals, and destroy countless lives to have her be.
“Baby.” My voice comes out broken. “When? When did you remember?”
She pauses to think about it for several moments. “Gradually,” she finally says. “After waking up from… Dagon. I don’t think I remember everything yet, but human memory is naturally imperfect. I remember enough.”
Anger takes over the mixture of elation/agony. “You’ve remembered for days and you haven’t said anything?”
“I said the only thing that mattered: you should’ve let me die.”
“Fuck that,” I hiss. “Don’t be a fucking coward, Flame. This world is hard. Living in it is hard. But you’ve survived and overcome too much to turn back now, after we’ve won.”
If she’s taken back by my tone, she doesn’t show it. Instead, she offers me a sad, small smile. “I didn’t win anything, Maximus. I achieved two of my goals—the only two things keeping me alive. Death was supposed to be a mercy.”
I swallow. Her words hit much harder than I want to admit, because I’ve been there, too. After my parents died and I assumed she died, I was devastated. Broken. I was a shell of the man I was trying to become… and there were moments when I thought I’d lost too much to go on, either.
But Ember doesn’t have nothing. She has me. She has my love, and she’s had it for over a decade. That love’s evolved from friendship to something more. I loved her even when I thought she was dead.
Can’t that be enough for her?
But I can’t outright say that. With her memories back or not, Ember isn’t the girl she once was. She’s evolved to something very different.
“We made a deal, if you recall.” I straighten. “I protect Alina from Dagon, and you belong to me. Don’t tell me that you’ve taken to breaking deals, Flame.”
“You’re really going to enforce that?”
“To my very last breath.”
Ember doesn’t bother with one of the guest bedrooms tonight. She knows I’ll follow her in there.
I want to strip her down and fuck her until she screams her will to live, but I don’t. Whether or not she admits it or even realizes it, she’s fragile right now. She needs affection, not a hard fuck.
So, when she climbs into bed, I climb in right beside her and gently draw her to my chest. She doesn’t fight me, quip, or try to escape. She melts into my touch.
Her brain might not care that she’s remembered me, but her body tells a different story. She was always meant to be in my arms.
“That night, when you kissed me,” I whisper against her hair. “My God, the thoughts that were running through my mind. I thought I’d lose it. I wanted to do terrible, wonderful things to you, but you were too young.”
She’s silent for so long, I think she might be asleep.
Then, she finally speaks. “I waited for you the rest of that year.” She pauses.
“I was devastated when you didn’t come home for spring break.
And when the end of the year rolled around…
” she shakes her head. “Then, it was too late.” I hear her swallow.
“You missed my birthday for the first time.”
Aw, shit.
“I was in a major fight with my parents. Don’t know if I ever told you this, Flame, but they were mafia. My dad was right-hand to a very bad man. I found out before going to college—apparently, he wanted me to take over the family business.”
She pulls back, catching my gaze. “I never knew. I’m so sorry.”
I shrug. “It’s fine. It is what it is. Not long before they died, I told my dad that I hated him, that he was a terrible person…
and next thing I knew, I was getting a call from the police, informing me that they’d passed away.
When I came home, you were gone.” My eyes squeeze shut as the wave of memories washes over me.
“My last interaction with my parents was basically me disowning them. Informing my father how much I hated him, and telling my mother that I thought she was weak for being with him. My last interaction with you was apologizing that I wasn’t going to be home for the summer…
after I’d missed your birthday. The losses killed something in my soul. ”
She’s quiet for a long time. Finally, she whispers, “You couldn’t have stopped anything that happened from happening—”
“But I could’ve been there. For them, for you. I could’ve avoided letting my parents down right before they died, and not being around to protect you.”
“You didn’t let anyone down. You were still just a kid, Max, with the maturity of a 15-year-old. Your parents knew you loved them, despite everything. They always believed you’d come back eventually.”
“How would you know?” My tone is derisive. I don’t like living in the past any more than Ember does.
“They asked me about you. They knew we talked. I might not have known why you were fighting with them, but I knew you were. I told them that you were angry and needed space, but that you loved them.” She releases a quiet laugh.
“When I got to that part, they didn’t seem concerned.
Your mother said she knew you loved them, but that you had your father’s temper and ability to hold a grudge.
They never, for a moment, doubted your love for them. Not for an instant.”
The burn in my eyes returns with a vengeance. I swallow past the knot in my throat. Her words don’t heal the long-festering wound of my parents’ loss, of my guilt, but they do soften the pain. They give me a morsel of peace where previously there was only an empty void of despair.
“And you?” I ask quietly. “Did you know?”
She’s quiet as she mulls it over. “I suspected. I hoped. I thought…” she cuts off with a soft laugh. “I convinced myself we were always meant to be together. It’s silly, my infatuation was silly and a byproduct of youth, but—”
“It was no such thing.” I cup her chin and direct her gaze to my own.
“What you knew was the truth, Ember. We always were meant to be together. You were my endgame. Even when I thought you were gone, that didn’t change.
It’s why I never had a meaningful relationship.
Why I joined the Nighthawks. I didn’t want another chance at love, because people only get one great love in this life.
And I was lucky enough to have mine for a long time. ”
Her eyes start to glimmer with something. She ducks her chin out of my hold and lowers her head, shaking it. “I… don’t know what to say.”
“Tell me you love me.”
“I don’t know what I feel now, Max. I’m fucked in the head. I don’t know what I want, or what I’m meant to do with my life. I don’t know what my fate is. I know I spent so long living for two things… and without those things, I feel lost. Empty.”
“You’ll never be empty.” I press down on her breast, over her heart. “Not here, anyways. I don’t care if you love me. I’ll love you enough for both of us.”
She swallows. Her eyes glimmer. “Stop it.”
“Why? Are my words hitting too close to home?”
“If you keep talking like that, I’m going to cry, and then I’ll have to kill you. Nobody gets to see my tears and live. Dagon was the last name on that list.”
I chuckle. Softly, at first, then with increasing fervor until I’m releasing full-belly, boisterous laughs.
She smacks my shoulder. “Shut up.”
“Sorry, Flame.” I bury my face in her neck. “Can’t. I loved the old you, but I love the new you even more.”