Chapter Fourteen
TOREN
I chase after him, tears brimming in my eyes. The sight of him like this is unbearable—my chest aches with an overwhelming need to comfort him, even as I know I shouldn't. If seeing his best friends destroys him like this, I can only imagine his devastation when he faces his sister's grave.
I reach out and grab his arm. He spins with lightning reflexes and wrenches free, causing me to stumble back against a gravestone. Pain shoots through my hip as I wince.
We stand frozen, staring at each other through tension so thick it steals my breath.
The raw agony in his eyes pierces straight through me, I feel his pain because I know it.
My own best friend rests only yards away.
We've both loved and lost, but unlike him, I don't barricade my grief. I let it guide me, shape me.
“Touch me again and I'll snap your fucking neck.”
I straighten and match his furious glare with my own, even as my heart fractures. “I knew coming here was a mistake,” I hiss.
“Then why the fuck did you? How did you even find me, Tink?”
“Caspian.”
His expression goes blank before anger floods back in. I want to beg him to see me, really see me standing here, showing him he doesn't have to be alone. But then I remember.
He killed Kellan.
I shouldn't be here trying to tame the monster inside him, coaxing him from the darkness he's claimed as sanctuary since losing everyone he loved.
I should be home planning my father's downfall without drawing the feds’ attention.
But I'm here anyway. Silently pleading for the boy who's changed everything to recognize he isn't abandoned.
Anger doesn't have to be his only companion.
Hatred doesn't have to fill the void.
“To teach is to learn. To learn is to excel. To excel is to thrive. To thrive is to live, Xaden.”
A stone wall crashes down as he shuts me out completely. “Save your riddles for someone who wants to hear them. You're not wanted here.”
“Liar.” The word drips steel and venom.
Something flickers in his gray eyes as he advances until barely an inch separates us.
His chest heaves. I see the war raging behind his gaze.
He's wrestling his demons for control, and it's a battle he's losing.
Part of him craves my destruction, but another part, a small, desperate part, doubts whether he could actually pull the trigger.
“You know what I think?”
“What the fuck do you think, Tink?” he sneers.
“I think you're terrified to let me in.” He stares at me like I'm nothing, but I refuse to stop.
“You're terrified to admit you feel something for me because you think I'll abandon you like everyone else.” His eyes harden as shadows cling to him like protective armor.
“You get off on hurting me, using me, being cruel because you think if you're enough of an asshole, it won't destroy you if I leave!” Tears stream down my face.
I don't have the strength to wipe them away, and I don't want to.
I need him to see the damage his carelessness has caused.
“I'm right fucking here, Xaden!” I scream.
“I fucking know, you stupid bitch!” he roars.
“No, you don't! You see me standing here but you're looking through me. You refuse to imagine a future with us because you're paralyzed by the fear of losing me!”
“I don't give a fuck what you think,” he sneers, but something desperate flashes beneath the cruelty. “If you try to run from me, you'll regret it. You're mine, Tink, and I'll never let you go.”
“I'm not something to be owned!”
“I fucking own you. And, that’s why you want to hate me because you love that I claimed you. You fucking get off on knowing that any second I could kill you and not bat a fucking eye.”
“No, you don't. I'm just a toy you play with, not something you care about or even want.
You refuse to let yourself feel anything but hatred toward me.
You choose to hate me like you choose to ignore what's really between us, because you're a coward, Xaden.
And I can't keep letting you hurt me. It's not just about what you want anymore.
I will never let you hurt my child the way you've hurt me.”
Shadows swirl around him like a storm warning that their master is about to unleash everything. “Try to run from me, Toren, and I swear to Christ I'll slit your throat and fuck your corpse as revenge.”
“You don't even want this baby!”
“Don't fucking tell me what I want!” he roars. I flinch backward and his eyes narrow in warning.
The darkness inside him isn't something he can ever escape, it's in his blood, woven into his very being.
And that's something I can't expose myself or our child to.
My heart is shattering and I can barely breathe, but I have to do this.
He's not safe, and raising a baby in this life isn't an option.
He wants me to suffer because I share a name with the man who killed his sister. I didn't see it before, but I see it now in his eyes that he'll never forgive me. He'll never stop blaming me for Emery's death. He'll always hate me, and that realization burns like a white-hot blade through my chest.
To survive, I have to let him go. So why does it feel like my soul is being ripped from my body?
“You're not ready for the truth,” I say quietly. “You want to hide your feelings from the world and bury yourself in this war against my family because it distracts you from facing reality. You think you're the only one who lost someone you loved, but you weren't—”
“Your brother killed them!” The anguish lacing each word hits like a physical blow.
My eyes widen, lips parting in shock. “You admit it wasn't me, yet you still hate me. Why?”
A dark, haunted look enters his eyes. He closes the distance between us, his warmth enveloping me like an invisible embrace. The liquor on his breath doesn't mask his natural scent, the one I find inexplicable comfort in, though I have no right to.
It's wrong.
He's wrong.
Yet I can't stay away.
“You're a Kellar. You have their blood. Their name. You look like them.” He reaches up and cups my cheek.
I melt into his touch like an addict craving a fix.
“Your breathing is a constant reminder that you lived and they didn't.” He leans down until his lips ghost over mine, making me gasp as need coils tight inside me.
“It should have been you that died,” he whispers, then brushes a devastatingly gentle kiss across my lips.
I'm stunned for a heartbeat before his words register. I shove him away, which only makes him laugh. My already frayed nerves disintegrate completely as I stare at this cruel, broken bastard.
“Is that all I'll ever be to you?”
A disturbingly relaxed expression settles over his features as he crosses his arms. I notice blood dripping from his hand and force down the urge to clean it, to care for him.
“You'll never be anything to me aside from a hole I stuck my cock in and apparently created that…” his face twists in disgust as his gaze drops to my stomach, “Thing.”
The blood drains from my face at his heartless description of our baby. “Fuck you, Devlin.”
“You already did, Tink.”
Fury erupts inside me. “Go home, you asshole,” I hiss and stalk past him. Coming here was a mistake. I should have left him to suffer alone in his grief.
“Argh!” A scream tears from my throat when he yanks me back by my hair. My back slams into his chest as his arm bands around my waist, cementing me in place. I squeeze my eyes shut, fighting against the vortex of confusion swirling inside me.
When he buries his face in the crook of my neck, my traitorous body melts into him. I'm pathetic. We're at war and here I am in the arms of my enemy, the son of a bitch who just murdered my friend right in front of me.
A scream of pain rips from me when he bites down on the soft flesh of my neck. I struggle to pull free but his arm is like iron, holding me captive. He replaces his teeth with his tongue, soothing the ache and drawing a moan from my lips. I tilt my head, offering him better access.
Just like that, I'm putty in his hands.
Under his control, waiting for him to bend me to his will.
“Whose fucking shirt are you wearing, Tink?” he growls in my ear, scraping his teeth against my lobe.
Shivers race down my spine as need tightens low in my belly.
My brain short-circuits when he lifts the hem of my shirt and slides his injured hand inside my jeans.
I arch onto my tiptoes as he cups me through my panties, gliding a finger along my slit.
He groans when he feels how wet I am. “Doesn't seem like you hate me as much as you claim.” His taunt dissolves when he pushes my panties aside and circles my clit, making me cry out.
When he bites my neck again, I scream, but this time the pain mixing with pleasure is intoxicating, addictive.
“Answer me or I stop,” he snarls, voice thick with need.
“It's Carnage's.”
He goes completely still, and I tense in his hold. “You let him touch you, Tink?” His tone is glacial.
I wet my lips. “No.”
“Hmmm.” He returns to driving me insane, lapping at my neck while playing my body like an instrument.
I feel his hardness pressing against my back and suddenly the hunger I feel for him consumes everything else.
I grip his arm and yank it from my pants.
Before he can protest, I spin around, fist his shirt, and pull him down to claim his lips.
I lock every rational thought away and refuse to think. I just want to feel. I want this final moment with him before sunrise comes and we return to hating each other, because even though I know I should walk away, even though he's poison in my veins, I can't bring myself to let go. Not yet.