Chapter Twelve #3
A sigh escapes me like the last breath of something dying.
I nod. “I wish it wasn't.” And God, the weight of that truth. Because this child, this tiny, impossible, inconvenient miracle is the chain that will bind me to Xaden Devlin for the rest of my life. I can’t hate him cleanly.
I can’t destroy him completely. Because every time I look at my child, I’ll see his eyes, and the war inside me will start all over again.
Cas purses his lips. Silence stretches between us like a wire about to snap, and my patience frays with it. He’s here about the baby, not about Kellan. Not about the friend who just bled out on the ice while they both watched.
“If that’s all you came for, you can leave.” My voice could cut diamonds.
He pushes off his bike and marches toward me, but a red laser dot blooms on his chest like a deadly flower and he freezes. I lean around the doorframe to see Carnage at the living room window, rifle raised, perfectly still. So that’s why Cas kept his distance.
“Want to call your guard dog off?”
“Nope.” I pop the 'P' with relish.
He glares. I feel nothing. “We need to talk.”
“About what? We have nothing to discuss. You're with him. I'm not.”
“You carrying his kid changes everything, Toren.”
“Go home, Cas. This conversation is over.” I turn to flee inside to my bed, to my ceiling, to the war in my head but his next words sink into me like hooks.
“He's at her grave.”
I stop. My hand grips the doorframe so hard my knuckles turn white. Don’t feel anything. Don’t you dare feel anything.
“He went there with enough booze to drown a horse.”
The image blooms in my mind unbidden. Xaden alone in a graveyard, drunk, hunched over his sister’s headstone, all that rage and armor stripped away until there’s nothing left but a broken boy mourning the people he couldn’t save.
And my stupid, stupid heart lurches toward him like a plant turning toward poison sunlight.
He killed Kellan.
He's at his sister’s grave.
He killed Kellan.
He’s never been to her grave before. Not once.
He. Killed. Kellan.
I spin around, and my eyes are burning. “And what the fuck does Xaden drinking have to do with me?”
Cas's jaw tightens. “He’s never gone to their graves. I know you know this.” He takes a breath, and I can see how carefully he’s choosing his words. “He’s a complicated bastard, Terror, I know that. But he’s a good—”
“I will tell Carnage to shoot you if you say he’s a good guy after he just murdered our friend.” My voice cracks on the last word and I hate myself for it.
He nods stiffly, and something in his expression shifts, the mask slipping to reveal his own grief, raw and bleeding underneath.
“Kellan had a hand in breaking him, Toren. Regardless of how you or I feel, I always knew some of the people I cared about wouldn’t make it out of this.
I hate your brother, his death won’t affect me.
But Kellan’s did.” His voice roughens. “I’m hurting too.
I was angry at him, but I never wanted him dead. You have to know that.”
“Then why didn’t you stop him?” I scream, and the tears come, hot and furious, because this is the question that will eat me alive.
Why didn’t Cas stop him?
Why didn't I stop him?
Why did I stand there and watch, just let it happen?
“He once told me,” Cas says quietly, “you have to fall in order to know where you stand.” He holds my gaze, and for the first time tonight, he looks as wrecked as I feel.
“He’s falling, Terror. You just flipped his entire world upside down.
He’ll never admit it to you, but he needs you right now, and I’m asking you to help me help him. ”
And there it is.
The cruelest request anyone has ever made of me. Go to the man who murdered your friend. Comfort the hands that pulled the trigger. Love the monster who took everything from you and dared to smile while he did it.
The worst part, the part that makes me want to scream until my throat bleeds, is that a part of me wants to go.
“Why the fuck should I do that?” I demand, and my voice is steel even as everything inside me fractures. “We are at war, Cas.”
“Both of you have had plenty of chances to kill each other,” he says, “and yet you’re both still breathing.” He lets that land. “Sooner or later, after your father and brother are dead, you and Xaden will have to face each other. Answer me this, Terror.”
He takes a step forward, the red dot still burning on his chest like a warning he no longer cares about.
“When that time comes... can you really look him in the eyes as you pull that trigger?”
The question detonates inside me, and I have no answer. Because the truth is a contradiction that’s going to tear me apart. I would burn the whole world down to avenge KennaDee, Kellan and Emery. I would dismantle Xaden piece by piece and salt the earth where he stood.
But when I imagine standing over him with a gun in my hand, looking into those devastating eyes one last time...
I don’t see a trigger being pulled.
I see a girl breaking in half.
And that’s why he’s the most dangerous person alive. Not because he can kill me, but because he’s the only one who can make me hesitate.
I’ll just have to make sure that when the time comes, I don’t.