Chapter 13 #2
He was shaking. His whole body trembled with the effort of containing enormous emotions.
Self-loathing poured off him in waves, visible in the hunch of his shoulders and the white press of his knuckles and the way he wouldn’t look at her.
“I made them. I made all of them. I can see the laboratory and my hands. I was calm, Evie. I was calm while I did it. I didn’t feel anything. ”
“I don’t think that was you,” she said.
“Then who was it?” he demanded, locking eyes with her. “Because I have only inhabited one body, and it’s this one. This one, that did unspeakably bad things.”
The way he said that reminded her of a past conversation with him. “Yes, but I wonder what was done to you, back when you were abducted as a teenager, to make you that way.”
He shook his head. “Don’t make excuses for me.”
“I’m not,” she replied, tapping her chin. “I’m considering a plausible explanation.”
“What?”
“That the male who took you, he made you into Pella Rin.” She met his gaze without flinching. “Perhaps using the same type of technology that Pella Rin used to make those hybrid females.”
His brow dropped low. “That doesn’t excuse—”
She put her hands on his face. “Jarran, shut up for a minute. Just stop.” He went still. “Would you blame the females who were created to work the terti flowers, or the ones we saw doing training when we arrived?”
“Of course, not,” he replied. “But why would anyone make someone like Pella Rin?”
Evie’s palms slid from his cheeks but he caught her hands between his own. She barely noticed with her mind going a mile a minute. “A legacy. A vehicle to pass on information that he knew.” Her face pinched. “To be immortal.”
“How would that make someone immortal?” he asked skeptically.
“Think about it.” It felt like a few puzzle pieces clicked into place.
“What if he couldn’t find someone in his own group of raiders—of Sifters—worthy of his knowledge, so he found a way to make an apprentice.
He passed his knowledge and cruelty and power to a protégé whom he could custom build to his exact specifications.
That protégé was you.” She peered into his eyes.
“I bet if we did the right tests, we’d find evidence of neurological tampering in your brain. ”
He winced. “No more tests. They always hurt.”
“Even if they proved that you, Jarran, were innocent?” She cocked her head. “I’d want to know.”
His gaze was intense. “Is it important to you to know if I’m innocent?”
Evie thought about that. “Honestly, yes. I care about you.” She swallowed hard.
“I—I think I more than care about you, and I would like to know if the person I have feelings for chose to become a criminal or if he was made into one. And I’d want to know if Pella Rin can be erased for good. I don’t want to meet him.”
He held perfectly still for a long moment, holding that hard gaze without blinking. “Then I’ll do the tests. If it’s important to you, and it will make you feel safe around me, I’ll do whatever you want.”
“Don’t you want to know?” she pressed.
Jarran sighed. “It’s a little too late for it to matter to me. Knowing whether that darkness was put inside me or not won’t erase the memories and it won’t erase the terrible actions done with my body.”
“I’d like to know who did this to you.” She stepped close to him. “Perhaps you can find a way to forgive yourself.”
His hands came to her waist and settled there. “Can you forgive me?”
She smiled up at him. “I never blamed you.”
His mouth came down on hers. Hard. Urgent.
Hungry. Those large hands tightened on her waist and tugged her against him, drawing her flush to the hard planes and angles of his muscular body.
She didn’t think about it. She didn’t weigh the ethics or the implications or the thousand reasons this was a terrible idea as she closed her eyes and opened her mouth to him. And kissed him back.
She kissed him as though she could shove every ounce of certainty she felt about him through her mouth and into his bloodstream. You are not that person. You are not what he built. You are this and I think I’m falling in love with you.
His hands gripped her waist, spanning the width of her with his fingers pressing into her lower back.
She could feel each individual finger through the fabric, each point of contact a line of heat, and his grip was careful even now, restrained even as his mouth plundered hers and turned the kiss desperate.
She pressed into him. Her fingers slid into his hair.
It was smooth and thick under her hands and she gripped it and pulled him closer and he made a sound against her mouth, low and rough.
He pulled her closer still and she went willingly, pressing further into him.
His arms closed around her and the breath left her lungs.