50. Summer
Chapter Fifty
Summer
I collapse back on the bed. My bones and joints ache, and so does my magic. I can still feel his power entwined with mine. It’s strong, willful, dangerous, and so deliciously sexy. It wraps around mine like two air currents curling around each other in a delicate dance.
Rolling onto my side, I curl into a ball. My body is still thrumming with the hunger his touch elicited and the echo of his words, but I can feel the guilt encroaching. As it invades my mind, it’s like a bucket of ice water dousing the residual warmth of the desire he’d stoked in me.
Fuck, why did I let it go that far? Why did I touch him? Why did I react as I did?
“Sum?” Alice’s voice is quiet, and I am beginning to hate that careful note in her tone.
“You good?” she asks, knocking softly before peeking her head around the door.
Her pixie-like face is pinched with worry as she searches my expression.
My guilt deepens. The pain and suffering I’ve caused her over the past few months are so apparent.
It’s in her eyes as she watches me, the shadows and worry in them never fully receding.
“Can I have a hug?” I ask. It’s not something I would have ever asked for before. I have never allowed myself to need it, but at the moment, I long for the comfort of my best friend. The comfort of someone who I know would never judge me, no matter what I do.
Alice lifts a brow in surprise, but wordlessly steps inside and closes the door. She pads silently across the room and climbs into bed. I feel better the moment she wraps her arms around me and snuggles in close. I bury my face against her and inhale her familiar scent of copper and freesias.
Alice sniffs the top of my head and then makes a gagging sound. “You smell like shifter?.?.?.”
I sigh. “Yeah . . .”
“Yuck,” Alice says.
I roll my eyes, my lips tugging up. “Please. With his scent on me, you probably want to fuck me.”
Alice pulls back and yanks the pillow from beneath my head. “You take that back!” she demands, whacking me. I burst out laughing, squealing as she continues to hit me with the fluffy weapon.
“What are you two doing?” Rafe asks, his voice unimpressed.
We both glance at him standing in the doorway, neither of us having heard him enter.
My smile dies when I remember his words from earlier.
Alice, noticing the change in my demeanor, glances between us and then launches the pillow at Rafe.
It hits him in the face, his reflexes still sluggish from the Fall.
I try to hold back my laugh, but I can’t stop it from bubbling out when the pillow catches on something small and sharp protruding from Rafe’s temple. He yelps and grabs it, pulling it away. The small, wicked-sharp horn slices through the fabric, and feathers fill the air.
We stare in silence for a long moment, and then Alice and I dissolve into laughter as feathers float through the room, falling all around us.
Rafe’s cheeks go pink, and he looks at Alice. “This is your fault!”
She snorts. “And?”
“Aren’t you going to clean it up?” he asks, crossing his arms over his chest.
Alice shrugs. “Meh. I have a new vacuum.”
I give Alice a look. It surprises me that she even knows the word vacuum .
But then she puts two of her fingers between her lips and lets out a loud -whistle.
Heavy footsteps and the sound of claws against hardwood thunder down the hall.
Rafe practically jumps out of his skin and falls on his ass trying to get out of the doorway.
I gasp and bolt upright in bed as a long, grayish tongue precedes a large Komodo dragon into the room, its dark green scales shining in the light .
“What the Almig— What is that?” Rafe asks, scrambling back to dodge the tongue. Slowly I turn my head and blink at Alice.
The Komodo dragon continues to eat the feathers on the floor.
His tongue sweeps over the wooden floors until it is completely covered in feathers before it retracts it.
The beast swallows down its prize before doing it again.
I grimace when I notice he is leaving residual saliva all over my floor.
Waving my hand, a small rune on my wrist illuminates, and the feathers disappear into the netherworld.
Even that slight tug on my well of magic reminds me of how drained I still am.
“Summer!” Alice exclaims. “How are we supposed to train the demon baby to have good manners?”
“He wasn’t cleaning it. The?.?.?. reptile was, and that’s not the question, Alice. The question is, why is there a reptile in our house?”
“Well—” Alice begins.
“You know that I’m older than both of you, right? And I am not a pet for you to train,” Rafe says, interrupting us. His eyes remain locked warily on the Komodo dragon circling the room, licking at the floor and seemingly confused by the lack of feathers.
I look between the dragon and the demon and sigh heavily. Do I deal with Rafe first or the giant lizard that has turned my room into a hazard zone with its saliva? Rafe. Definitely Rafe.
I sit up on the bed. “Al, can you take the lizard away? I need to have a word with Rafe, but we will be having a family meeting about your new?.?.?. pet later.”
She nods and slinks away. The creature follows her, his thick tail swishing behind him. I try to think of another rune to remove the saliva from the floor, but when nothing comes to mind, I decide that’s future Summer’s problem.
I pat the bed next to me, inviting Rafe to join me. He sighs and pushes to his feet, making his way across the floor to sit beside me, only slipping on reptile goo twice. Rafe looks at me for a long moment before sighing again and shaking his head.
“I know,” he says, before I even have the chance to start the conversation. “I got upset, but I know my uncle.”
I frown. “I get it, Rafe. But you needed it.”
Rafe nods, and he shifts to face me. “But I need you more.” I meet his gaze. “All right? ”
I exhale. I know that can’t have been easy for him to admit. It wouldn’t have been easy for me either.
“Would it help if you knew I didn’t go alone?”
Rafe’s brows draw. “Who did you go with?”
Fuck.
“A friend.” I’m not even sure if it’s a lie anymore. With friends like him, who needs enemies? But he has saved my ass more than once.
“Not the stalker guy?.?.?.” Rafe says, and I blink at him. “Connor told me,” he says, by way of explanation.
“He . . . did?”
Rafe nods. “After you came here for something. He told me about your ‘friend,’?” he says, using air quotes.
“Why do you say it like that?”
Rafe shrugs. “That’s what he called him.”
“Friend with quotation marks?” I ask, and my heart sinks. Was Connor more worried about the stranger than he let on? Did he sense I was keeping more from him?
“Well, no, I added those.”
“What else did he say?” I ask, my stomach knotting. I’m not sure I want to know, but I need the whole truth if I am ever going to get past this pervasive guilt.
“He asked what I thought,” Rafe says, and I hold my breath. “I said that you were obsessed with him to the point of revulsion.”
“He was worried?” I ask on a harsh exhale, releasing the breath I only realized I was holding.
Rafe shakes his head. “Not how I think you mean. He was more asking me if I thought he should be concerned about a guy following you around while a killer was on the loose.”
I lean back against the headboard. Connor was always such a good guy.
He trusted me implicitly, and I didn’t deserve him.
Even when I drunkenly found the stranger’s voice sexy, and I admitted it to him, he only ended up comforting me.
He cast no blame, and we both knew he would have been within his rights to do so.
“Back to Hell,” Rafe prompts.
“He was with me. We took precautions.” Gods, why does that sound so dirty ?
Rafe rubs his face. “How good is he?”
“What?” I ask, blinking at him.
“At precautions . This is Hell we’re talking about. You think he’s good enough to fool my uncle in his own kingdom?”
“I do, actually,” I say with complete confidence. The stranger is a powerful being, and his mind is second to none. Plus, I know he would never put me at risk.
“Who is he?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then how do you know that?” Rafe asks, and I can see that he is unconvinced.
“I just do,” I say again with complete confidence.
“Yeah, I’m going to need more than that to trust him with you.”
“I don’t have more to give you. You just have to trust me .”
Rafe narrows his eyes at me. “No more trips to Hell. I mean it, Sum.”
I cross my arms over my chest. “No more being an asshole to people who are only trying to help you.”
“You first.”
I blink. “What did I do?”
Rafe rolls his eyes. “You are that self-sacrificing asshole at the end of every movie, the one who thinks it all depends on them?.?.?. blah blah blah.” I glare at him. “You are. You and Connor both.”
My frown deepens. How can he think that?
“Have I ever told you about it?” About the worst day of my life, how I failed to sacrifice myself for the only good thing in my life.
I don’t remember telling him, but I couldn’t tell you what happened in those first few days after it happened.
I’m almost certain I didn’t see any of the Morningstars, but you never know.
If any of them had come to try to understand what happened, it would have been Rafe.
It’s how he processes things. It’s how I process them too, and it’s another reason I manufacture the dreams.
Rafe locks eyes with me. “Do you want to?” he asks. There is no fear, no pressure. It’s a simple question.
“I will tell you. If you want to know.” Why your brother died. Why I am alive, and he is not. If anyone deserves to know, Rafe does.
He studies me for a long moment before responding. “Only if you are ready, Summer. There is no reason to rehash trauma when it’s still actively traumatizing you.”
I look down at my hand and my empty ring finger.
I brush my thumb over where his ring used to be.
“It will always be traumatic,” I say, looking up at him.
“But I think you need to know.” Connor’s story deserves to be told.
He deserves to live through his brother’s memories.
My memories. He deserves to be remembered as a hero. As my hero.
Rafe nods. “Then tell me.”