41. Summer #3
Hardening my gaze, I grab his hand and roughly rub his wrist against my throat.
I’m about to shove it away when I feel how his own heart is racing.
Something in me softens, and instead of dropping his hand, I tilt my head, moving him along my collarbone and then to the other side of my throat, where my pulse is hammering as hard as his.
My movements are slower, -gentler, and I hold his gaze.
I angle his hand and tip my head, watching him as I nuzzle my cheek against his palm.
His eyes are completely black, and his parted lips look so pillowy soft.
He brushes his thumb along my jaw,?and my breath hitches.
Fuck, this is dangerous.
I drop his arm and flinch back as if he’s scorched me.
The stranger collapses back onto the bed, exhaling heavily, and I sit there for a few moments, staring at the wall before I climb out of bed.
I grab my pillow and turn off the light before lying down on the floor.
A swirl of blue magic wraps around me, and I am lifted back onto the bed, unceremoniously deposited there.
Anger surges within me again. “What the fuck do you want from me?”
“Just go to sleep,” he growls.
I whirl on him. “No. I want you to tell me what the fuck you want from me. Why are you here?” I don’t know if I’m emboldened by the darkness, whether it’s the effects of the realm, or if it’s just all built up for so long that I can’t hold it back anymore.
“Why are you everywhere except—” I stop mid-sentence. I don’t want to go there. Not now.
His shoulders go rigid. His back is still to me, but tension radiates off him. He is silent for a long moment before he breaks it. “Ask me.”
“I . . .”
“You started something. Finish it.”
Rage curdles inside me, and I’m not sure I can hold on to it any longer.
“Where were you when I was tied to a chair being tortured by some psychopath?” I ask, the rage in my voice sending a chill down my spine, the power behind it.
“When I was cut, stabbed, slashed, and sliced?” I continue, watching his back, feeling all that anger coiling into the most destructive spring.
“When Connor—” I choke then, grief wrinkling the anger. “Where were you?”
He remains tense, still not looking at me, and his voice when it comes at me in the dark is terrifyingly calm. “I was killing the backup.”
This time, it’s my turn to tense.
“By the time I knew what was happening, it was already too late.” The regret is heavy in his voice, but I don’t believe him.
I can’t. I need to exist in a world where he feels nothing.
No regrets, no remorse. “So I laid waste to her sect of religious fanatics and their plans to complete their twisted desires.” The cold edge I am used to from him returns.
“And I enjoyed it,” he says. Something about his words, about the way he uses them, stirs something else inside me.
I can only stare at him.
“I should have?.?.?. I knew something was going on, but I was?.?.?. so fucking furious at you. So I wasn’t watching as closely, and then it was too late.” The sadness in his voice stabs me in the chest. “I was too late,” he says, the words barely a whisper.
I swallow, the tears pooling and burning my eyes.
My head is a complete chaos of thoughts, emotions, lies, and truths.
I need to say something, say anything, but I choose the cowardly option and lie back down.
Turning onto my other side, I curl into a ball, trying to hold together my pieces, not that holding my pieces ever stopped me from breaking more.
“I would never wish this agony upon you, not like this. Never like this,” he whispers into the darkness between us.
The tears finally fall, scalding my cheeks.
The bed dips behind me, and suddenly his arms are enfolding me again. In one quick movement, he’s turned me so my face is buried against his chest.
I pull back, looking up at him. “Stranger?—”
“Shh,” he says, cupping my cheek. “Just for tonight.”
His eyes burn into mine, his warmth seeping into me. “This doesn’t change anything.”
I have no fucking idea why I do it, but I relent completely, submitting to him.
I don’t know if it’s because I’m desperate for some comfort.
Is it because I believe him? I don’t know if it’s because I am so sick of my heart breaking, not just because of Connor dying, but also because I lost the stranger.
My friend. All I know is that right now, my darkness is no longer raging, cutting, and biting at me.
Within the comfort of his arms, it swirls calmly, and the respite is allowing that part of my heart to stitch itself slowly back together.
All I know is that his warmth is exactly what I need right now.
The stranger tunnels his fingers into my hair and inhales deeply. A soft moan escapes his throat, and I exhale, allowing him to shoulder some of the weight of the fear, guilt, and anger that have been my burdens since that day. Feeling safe for the first time in months, I drift off into the abyss.