“Yes.” Killean may doubt that, but she didn’t.
“It’s so good to hear your voice.”
“Yours also. My mom? Is she okay? I lost sight of her after I was captured, and she wasn’t with us in that place.”
“She’s fine,” Kadence said. “She’s worried about you, but I’ll let her know we talked.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful.” Tears of joy filled Simone’s eyes. “Please tell her I love and miss her.”
“I will.”
They spoke for a few minutes more before she handed the phone back to Killean who talked with Ronan and hung up.
When his gaze returned to her, her shoulders went back. She didn’t want to fight with him anymore, but she was prepared to battle him until he got it through his thick skull that she wasn’t fragile. The silence extended into minutes while they gazed at each other.
“I can handle the darkness, Killean,” Simone finally said, “but I’m not sure you can handle letting go of your past enough to walk out of the shadows.”
With that, she turned away, gathered some clothes from one of the bags, and strode into the bathroom.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Killean staredat the ceiling as he lay on the bed with his hands propped behind his head while he listened to Simone’s soft breaths. Rolling over, he gazed across the distance separating the two beds and at the curve of her back. They’d removed their socks and shoes, but both still wore their clothes in case they had to flee from here.
The last words she’d spoken to him ran on a constant loop in his mind.“I can handle the darkness, Killean, but I’m not sure you can handle letting go of your past enough to walk out of the shadows.”
What had she meant by that? How could he just walk away from the events that forged him into the man he was?
Suddenly, she rolled over and he found himself staring into her striking eyes. And just looking at her, for the first time in his life, he considered letting go of his past to embrace a future with her.
But how could he bind her to someone such as himself?
She was far too good for him. He’d been broken before he reached maturity and found himself seeking death; he was worse now.
“I know the stake missed your heart, but at seven you hadn’t fully matured yet, so how did you not bleed out?” Simone asked.
Simone braced herself for him to tell her to mind her own business, call her a dolly, or some other incensed reaction. Instead, he merely lay there, staring at her in a way that made her feel cherished though she had no reason to believe he would ever treasure her.
Killean debated answering her, but he’d already told her more than he’d intended, so he saw no reason not to reveal more.
“My uncle found me before I bled out,” Killean finally said. “He lived on the estate next to ours in England. And by next to ours, I mean his manor was an hour ride away by horseback. When my father didn’t arrive for their weekly card game, he came to check on us. He found me, barely clinging to life, and gave me his blood to save me.”
“What became of him?”
“Hunters killed him fifty years later. He was the last of my family.”
Simone held back the tears burning her eyes. His entire family had been wiped out in such a short amount of time, and by her kind. “I understand why you’ve hated my kind for so long, and what they did to you and your family was unforgivable, but things are changing between our sides. Those hunters didn’t know there were good vampires in the world and believed you were all evil.”
“The things those hunters did to my family, and me, makes some Savages look kind.
I wasn’t the only one they cut. They tortured us for hours.”
“Hunters don’t do those things.” Simone regretted the words as soon as they were out of her mouth; she felt a snapping in him from across the three feet separating them, and her denial was childish. He still bore the scars of what those hunters did to him, and they were only the ones she could see. She suspected his inner scars ran far deeper than the ones he wore for the world to see.
Killean sat up on the bed and set his feet on the floor. “You said you could handle the dark side, dolly, yet you’re denying what I’m telling you.”
Simone sat up too. “I can handle it. It’s just that hunters… we’re not… we’re…”
“What?” Killean asked when her voice trailed off. “You’re not evil? You’re the good guys? Perhaps, like vampires, many hunters mean well, but some of them are vicious bastards who hide behind the killing of vampires to unleash the rot inside their souls.” Lifting his hand, he ran his fingers along the scar on his face. “I still bear this, and the one on my chest, because I was so young the scars were forever etched onto me.”
