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“Jesus fuck, Lil. Give me something before I go get myself killed. Because I know I’ll at least get one good hit in before he comes after me with a—”
“No. Beck, no!” I choked out as I tried to force the tears back. “I’m fine, it’s just—it’s this day, you know? This stupid day.” My chin trembled, but I forced myself to continue on. “I’m emotional, and it’s all just getting to me. I need a shower, and I need to sleep, or something.” I forced out a strained laugh. “I’m being such a girl.”
Beck looked lost. He looked like he didn’t know if he should still risk his life by going up against Kieran or believe me.
After a few moments of staring at me with a dumbfounded expression, he hesitantly asked, “Is this one of those times when I need to send someone out for chocolate?”
A real laugh tumbled from my lips, soggy from my tears. And despite being so wrong, I nodded. “Yes, this is one of those times.”
“Okay. Okay, I’ll send Conor.” He released me and took a step back, but paused as he searched my face. He was trying to force himself to believe me, and I knew he was worried about getting this wrong. “Okay, yeah. Chocolate.”
“You’re the best.”
I waited until the door was shut behind him before heading into the bathroom and stripping out of the shirt I’d pulled back on. Once the shower water was on and steaming up the bathroom, I stepped in and let the hot water mix with the tears that were slowly falling again.
I rubbed at my chest as I felt the growing distance between Kieran and me become a living thing inside me, and grieved what had become of us.
Every one of our firsts had been together. And knowing him the way I did, they had gone as expected.
He was ruthless in everything, with moments of tenderness reserved for me. Making him lethal with his knives and on my heart.
The touches, the kisses . . . they all came from the same place. They all came from the dreamer who knew how to be soft and melt me with words. They’d come from Kieran.
Sex with him had always been rough and intense and full of power. It had been exhilarating, unrestrained passion. I’d craved it. Craved him. Every dark fantasy came to life, prompted by the monster inside. Pure Nightshade.
But there was never anything more. There were only those nights I could remember in flashes of slick skin, the sweetest kind of pain, and body-numbing tremors as he’d push me to the edge. There was never intimacy, there was never the tender love I knew he felt for me. And as the years went on, the more had been necessary. I’d wanted and needed Kieran in my bed too, not just Nightshade.
But that force between us that threatened to push until we couldn’t find our way back to each other? It had been born from broken promises, and fueled by every rough and disheartening sexual encounter over the last years.
Because when Aric died, I’d needed Kieran. Only Kieran. And each time I was met with Nightshade, it broke something inside me, hardening me to the man I loved.
Maybe it was my fault for believing he could be someone I knew he couldn’t. For believing one of those times, he would see what he was doing to me . . . how he was breaking me. Us.
Maybe it was my fault for forgetting the complexity of the man I loved. For forgetting why I’d fallen in love with him in the first place.
Maybe it was . . .
But those glimpses of his heart would always make me foolishly hope for things he couldn’t give me.
Would always make me foolishly hope he could save us. That he wanted to save us. But that hope was dwindling every day.
Everyone at the table was talking loudly, trying to be heard over the others as they all reacted to the news that Johnny and I had been given just hours before.
Lily O’Sullivan was alive.
Motherfucking alive.
I gripped my head in my hands as I stared at the table, trying to block out their voices.
Because she couldn’t be. I knew in my gut that she wasn’t.
But if she was—I would stop at nothing to steal Lily’s last breath the way he had stolen hers.
“Dare!”
I glanced up when my older sister shouted my name, my eyes already narrowed on her.
“I’ve been calling your name for, like, a minute,” Libby said, her eyes full of concern. “What are we going to do?”
