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I hang on her every breath as she ponders. I don’t say anything because there’s nothing I can say.
“But I do understand there are things we’re just too afraid to share, not even because of what it might do to us, but what it might do to the people we love. I didn’t talk about the night when Sade pulled the masked man stunt on me either, until I was forced to.” She clasps my elbow gently, her eyes on mine. “So, whatever you need to do, I’ve got your back. I’m the last person who should judge anybody, much less my own friends. All things considered, I know your affection for us was real. Is real.”
“It is real,” I whisper. I didn't even realize that I was crying until a tear rolls down onto my lips. Or how close I’ve come to Justine until the folded clothes in her arm are all that stands between us. “You, the girls and Goldie are the most beautiful things that ever happened to me, Justine. You’re the closest thing to family that I have ever experienced. The only...loves...”
She smiles when I pause at that word.
“The only loves until Micah,” she muses.
The words spill out of me like a dam just broke.
“What I feel for him is killing me,” I manage among sobs. “It’s so profound, but not like a calming wave. It’s like a thousand spears splintering my bones. Every time I look at him I want him so badly that it hurts. But I can never, never really have him.” I rub my chest, right where the craving for him punches a permanent hole through my body and soul. “Once I save Goldie, I’d let him have my life if I knew that’s what he needs in order to silence those demons forever. But I can’t sacrifice my little sister to their hunger.”
Justine cups my face with her hand. “What if all he wants is you? All of you, for real? No secrets, no masks?”
“I’ve given myself to him in all the ways I could. And you know what? I think he did the same.” I wipe the tears from my eyes with the back of my hand. “When Romano tormented him in that room, he made Micah tell him what he felt about me.” The memory hurts, but I need to purge this, and what better time and place, if not here and now with Justine. “It fascinated Romano how a damaged soul like Micah would experience, well, love. Every word that left his mouth felt like an emotional orgasm, Justine, even though he said he couldn’t experience actual love, that he wasn’t equipped to. How fucked up am I?”
“Eva,” Justine says, her voice laden with held-back tears. “Sade and I have been there, too. Both Sade and Micah do feel love, and they actually feel it at levels that the rest of us mortals can’t even fathom. To most people they’re forged monsters that can do terrible things, go to lengths that normal men can’t, but that only means they can go to the same scary lengths emotionally, too.”
“And where do I fit into all of this? What have I done to deserve this kind of...love, if that’s what you’d call it?”
“Just like with me and Sade, I think you and Micah clicked in a way that’s, well, mystical.” She holds up her palm because I usually protest when it comes to anything remotely mystical. “I know how you feel about that subject, but you can’t deny that you are just the balm for Micah’s trauma and emotional damage, just like I was the exact panacea that Sade needed. As if we were made for each other.”
For all of my qualms with divinity, after today’s mayhem, a church is the first stop I’d make if I had a choice. Plus, Justine is right. Micah uncovered secret parts of me, and I pulled feelings out of him that no woman ever did before.
I squirm at the memory of how I came all over his gun, of how it aroused me when he inflicted violence on Romano. Of how his vengeance sent shuddering thrills through my soaked pussy.
“Unfortunately that twisted love is coming to strangle me as we speak, and I’m still here.” The statement serves to make both Justine and me step back and wipe the tears from our eyes. She places the folded clothes in my hands.
“Go save your sister, Eva. I’ll have your back in every way I can.”
I nod, pushing down the lid on the throbbing pain in my chest. Every thought of Micah hurts, and my heart is pumping the pain all through my body, but I have to pull myself together one last time and do what must be done.
Afterwards, I’ll get away from him forever or let him kill me, because both Micah and I know that what we have is sick, and it will end up burning both of us to death. As beautiful as it is, what we feel for each other isn’t healing us, like it does for Sade and Justine. We’re more of a necessary evil to each other than a panacea. So I pull the overlarge hoodie, which I’m sure belongs to Sade, over my head, and squeeze myself into Justine’s black denim leggings.
She manages to get me out through the back of the servants’ wing, which isn’t an easy feat, considering it’s the most closely guarded part of the mansion, with many rooms locked and sealed.
By the time I speed out of the mansion gates in Justine’s dad’s car, my heart has crumbled in my chest. But too much depends on me now. I have to get to Goldie and Micah’s mother if it’s the last thing I do.
