Chapter 36 Halo
Chapter thirty-six
Halo
“Love Like a Loaded Gun”
She was still shaking in my arms, and the gun was still on the floor between us. I held her like she might disappear.
“I’m sorry,” I said again, for the fifth time, like it would matter now. They were useless words.
She was stiff in my arms, and I didn’t know if she was going to collapse against me or shove me off her.
I wouldn’t have fought it either way. I hadn’t moved from where I dropped to my knees when she put the gun to her head.
I’d begged her to stop. I’d begged. I had never knelt before any man or god, but I would have given up everything to make sure she didn’t pull that trigger.
That was the moment I broke: the moment I realized how fast it could all be gone, and not because of an enemy. Because of me.
“I should’ve told you the truth from the start,” I said, voice cracking, “but if I did, you’d run. And if you ran, you’d be dead.”
“You killed her,” she said. Her voice was shaking now, not with fear, but with grief and rage.
“She was—” I stopped. Don’t say it, don’t try to justify it. Don’t cheapen it. Don’t make it worse. “She wasn’t you. That’s all that mattered to me.”
Eden flinched, turning her face away like the words were a physical blow.
“I thought if I gave him a body, I could buy time to end this. To take out everyone who knew your name before he ever got close.”
“And what then?” she asked, still not looking at me. “Were you ever going to tell me?”
“I don’t know.” My voice came out like sand. “I wanted to. But every time I looked at you, all I could think about was what you’d say when you found out. How you’d look at me.”
She turned slowly, her eyes landing on me like a blade. “You killed a girl who looked like me. Sent photos of her, let that man believe she was me. Someone loved her, someone is missing her. Someone is lying awake right now, trying to understand why someone would kill her like that.”
She stood and walked a few feet away, arms wrapped around her midsection like she was trying to hold herself together. I had noticed her do it before when she was fraying, nervous, unsure.
“Do you even remember her name?” she asked. “Or did she stop being a person the second you saw a way out?”
I stood, finally, knees burning from how long I’d been on the floor. My chest felt hollow and heavy. “No,” I said. “I didn’t ask her name.”
Eden nodded slowly, like she already knew. Like that was what she needed to hear to seal whatever decision she was making. “She was just another body.”
“No,” I said fiercely. “She was a cost I was willing to pay, and I will carry her.”
She turned back to me, fire in her eyes. “You think carrying it makes it better?”
Her anger broke, and her knees buckled a little. I moved without thinking, ready to catch her, but she held up a hand. “Don’t touch me.”
I stopped dead.
Her voice dropped. “Even if I walk away now, I’ll still be the girl a stranger died for. And I’ll never get to not be that again.”
I stepped forward, but this time slower and more careful.
“If you want to run,” I said, “I won’t stop you. I won’t follow. You deserve to choose what comes next for you, but I won’t stop until they’re all dead. Even if you walk out that door, I am going to finish what I started.”
She looked at me, her eyes rimmed with tears, and then she walked past. Her shoulder brushed mine like a ghost passing through my body.
She went out the door. She didn’t slam it, just closed it softly behind her. I stood in the middle of the room where she had almost died, where I’d kneeled for the first time in my life, and I wondered if I’d just traded one grave for another.
I stared at the empty doorway like I could rewind time just by willing it. I didn’t chase her because I had told her I wouldn’t. I didn’t even breathe because I’d seen it in her eyes: not just betrayal but abandonment.
Minutes passed. Maybe hours. I didn’t know. I couldn’t move from the place where I stood by the bed.
Then the door burst open again – slammed against the inside wall so hard the frame shook.
She was back, chest heaving, eyes bright with something dangerous.
Not fear this time. Rage. Her fists were clenched at her side, jaw tight, tears dried but not gone.
She threw the burner phone hard against the wall, and it broke into several plastic pieces.
She stormed into the room like she was ready for a fight, and my heart jumped in my chest. I didn’t know if she was here to hit me, scream, or kill me.
She crossed the space between us with purpose, grabbed me by my shirt collar, and shoved me backwards.
I didn’t let her; she caught me off guard enough that my back hit the wall.
“You should’ve told me,” she snapped.
“I know, but I—”
“Shut up.”
I did.
She got in my face, close enough for me to feel her breath. “You keep saying you’re doing this for me. That all of it’s about keeping me safe, but you don’t even look at me. Not really. You’re never here.”
“I’m looking at you now. I’m here.” I tried to hold her stare.
“No,” she said, eyes narrowing. “You’re hiding behind that dead-calm voice and that empty stare and all that fucking coldness like it’s armor. You want to protect me?”
She shoved me again.
“Eden—”
“Show me something, Halo. Be human for five seconds. Scream at me, hate me, tell me you wish I never came into your life. Cry. Anything. Just stop pretending you don’t feel anything.”
“I don’t hate you.”
“You’re a fucking liar. You’ve been treating me like baggage from the beginning, like some… I don’t know. Some kind of quest that you were forced to take on.”
“I would burn this world to the ground before I let it so much as touch you. I killed that girl to buy you time. I put a bullet in someone who looked like you so Matteo would think he already won. I have killed four more men who were coming to find you. I would do it again, and I’ll keep doing it.
If I had a thousand lives, I would spend them all doing this. ”
She stepped in close. “I want to hate you,” she said, chest to mine.
“You should.”
“I don’t know if I can still trust you.”
She looked down at the table, at the knife I’d just cleaned and then she grabbed it. As she held it up between us, I had a surge of panic that she would turn it on herself like she had with the gun… but instead, she offered it to me, handle first.
“Prove I still can.”
I stared at her, pulse hammering as I muttered her name in uncertainty again.
“You said you’d never hurt me,” she whispered, “so show me what that means.”
I took the knife, slowly, like she might change her mind. She didn’t. She stepped back and pulled the hoodie off her shoulders, revealing just the black tank top underneath, already damp from sweat and anger and adrenaline.
“Do it,” she said. “If you can kill for me, you can kill me.”
“You don’t get to say that.”
“I don’t want this,” she said, hysterical. She shoved me again, as though she could push me through the wall. The knife was still in my hands. “I want the part of you that you are afraid to let out here.”
I grabbed her by the throat and turned her, pushing her into the wall where I had just been. She didn’t have time to react; she was too emotional. I could feel the tight, tense edge in her. She wasn’t scared. I didn’t know what she was feeling right now, but God, part of me wanted her like this.
I brought the blade to her collarbone and dragged the dull side across her skin, a feather-faint line from her neck to her sternum. Her breath hitched.
“You think you trust me?” I asked through gritted teeth.
She nodded.
“No, I want you to say it.”
“I trust you.”
“Then don’t look away.”
I kept my hand against her throat, thumb pressed against the fluttering pulse there.
The tip of the blade met the neckline of the tanktop and I hooked it on the blade, jerking it down with a surgical ease.
It was precise, calculated. I knew exactly how much pressure to apply.
She arched against the pressure, but not away from me. I felt her pulse quicken.
I traced it along her bare sternum now, letting the sharp tip snag against the fabric of her bra.
“You want to know who I really am?” I asked, moving my lips along her jaw as I put the knife against the wall beside her. “Here I am.”
She squirmed, testing the restraint I had on her.
“Let me go.”
“Make me.”
I kissed her, rough and hungry. I wanted her to know that she asked for this. She bit my lower lip hard enough that I tasted my own blood and I laughed against her mouth.
“You don’t get to kiss me,” she snapped, my blood trickling down her lip and staining her teeth.
“Good. Fight me.”
And she did. She twisted beneath me, trying to pry my hand off of her throat, but every time she moved, I moved closer.
Every inch she tried to reclaim, I took more.
She bit me. Her nails dug into my shoulders, leaving dozens of bruising crescent moons on my flesh.
She pulled my hair. She was in total control, even though I was the one pinning her down. She owned every second of it.
“You still want me?” she asked, breathless.
“More than I’ve ever wanted anything.”
She grabbed my shirt and tried to pull me into a kiss, exactly what she had just told me I couldn’t have. I turned her around, wrapping my arm around her shoulders and putting the blade to her throat. I was careful to keep the sharp edge away, pressing the other side against her flesh.
I handed her the knife and our eyes met.
Without saying it aloud, I was telling her your turn.
She took it, and for a moment, it hovered between us.
Her hands didn’t shake. She dragged the flat of the blade down my torso, following it with her eyes.
When she got to my pants, she didn’t stop, tracing the knife over the length of my cock.
“Take them off,” she said.
I obeyed, pushing my pants down my legs and kicking them away.
My skin burned from adrenaline and the ache of wanting her, even when I told myself I shouldn’t.
Even when I had just been through a rollercoaster of emotions with her in the last hour.
I was starting to think that maybe she was a psycho.
But she was breathtaking: furious and powerful and in control. I sat on the edge of the bed as she stripped off her shorts and underwear. She crouched in my lap, thighs around my hips.
“I want to feel you, but I want to feel what you’re afraid to show me,” she said, voice hoarse.
One of my hands found her waist and I tried to pull her closer. I brushed my nose over her cheek and quietly asked, “Let me kiss you?”
She responded by moving the knife blade to my throat, and our parted lips ghosted over each other but never made full contact. “No.”
I huffed a frustrated breath, drunk on the want, the need.
“But I can kiss you,” she added, moving her lips along my neck. Her tongue found my pulse, and I groaned. She ground against my cock, and I could feel the slickness of her arousal on me.
“You’re so fucking wet,” I rasped.
I grabbed her ass and rocked her against me harder. I wanted to be inside her again, but this was her show.
She circled her hips. The contact wasn’t enough, and it was driving me crazy.
“You feel that?” she asked.
“That’s mine,” I whispered.
“Then take it.”
I didn’t need any more permission; I moved my hand to guide myself and thrust up into her in one hard, unrelenting motion. She cried out, nails digging into my shoulder again, back arching.
I grunted, a shockwave of pain in my gut as I resisted the urge to move. “You okay? If you want me to stop, just say it.”
She didn’t respond, and I worried that maybe she had changed her mind. She had the knife back at my throat.
“Just say the word, Eden,” I insisted, rolling my hips once, despite myself.
“Please.”
“Please what?”
Her eyes were glassy and wild. “Please don’t stop.”
She faltered when I pulled her into me, and her hand slipped.
I felt the tip of the knife nick my throat, warm blood beading down my neck.
I grabbed the handle of the knife and wrenched it from her grasp, throwing it across the room.
I heard it clatter to the floor somewhere in the corner.
She kissed me on the mouth so hard that our teeth collided.
My bleeding lip throbbed with pain as her tongue moved over the raw split.
I turned us, putting her on her back and pinning her wrists above her head. She fought, but it was a game.
“You’re not scared enough, Eden,” I whispered. I tightened my grip on her wrists and I felt her tremble. “Is this what you really want?” I asked, voice all grit.
She struggled against me.
“You have to say it. You have to say you want it rough, that you want it real, or I can’t give it to you.”
“Yes, fuck yes,” she gasped. “I want it to hurt.”
I grabbed her by the hips and flipped her over, losing that connection with her briefly.
The air in the room was ice cold against my overheated skin.
I shoved back into her and she screamed into the mattress, fists clenching in the sheets.
She rocked back into me, meeting every thrust like a challenge, colliding into my hips when I drove forward.
She tried to get onto her elbows to give herself more leverage.
I could feel her tightening around me, her body quaking as she neared climax, but I wasn’t ready to let her be there yet.
I pushed her upper body back down, hoisting her lower body further up at the same time.
I withdrew from her, and she growled something into the mattress.
I slipped two fingers inside her wet heat, curling slowly, then I removed them to circle her swollen clit.
“Tell me you hate me,” I whispered, free hand moving across her back restlessly like I didn’t know what to do with it.
“I hate… I hate that I love you,” she said, voice still muffled by the sheets.
I stopped. That was a hurt that – even in this scenario – didn’t seem fair.