“No, he doesn’t,” I mutter. But I’ve been fed words offoreverbefore. I believed them too readily when Talira said them. I never even questioned whether or not she meant what she was saying. And now? With her still cropping up every so often, trying to get back to what we were? It stings to know thatI’mthe one cutting the option offoreverout.
Because she hurt me.
And then I was an idiot.
And now I refuse to forgive her for not being there when I needed her most.
Maybe I’ve made up all her other crimes to justify how rotten I’m being. Maybe I’ve mixed up our relationship with how I let myself be used after she abandoned me. Maybe everything was perfect, and she made one little mistake, and she was a victim, and I’m not letting her get past it.
Even though she’s kept trying.
Forfive and a half years.
She’s tried to mend things for over five entire years, and I haven’t let her. For all I know, she’s doing her best to hold on to what she promised and what we had, because she cares about me, still, even though I’ve been pushing her away foryears, because I’m…bitter.
“I’m the problem,” I say. “I’m always…the problem.”
“If so,” Maelin says, “doesn’t that also make you the solution?”
Yeah. I guess. Logically, and all that.
But that sure doesn’t make it any easier.
Chapter 17
?
I liver you more.
Kyran
“Mistress.” I help Morana drag Lukas’s pile of bio hazard laundry—which I am positive my poor sweet little sister Clara gathered up in his filthy room—out to wash. “It was so cold last night.”
Morana makes some manner of confirming sound, yet doesn’t look at me, or really acknowledge that I’m speaking.
I continue, “I lay, freezing, in my bed that smelled of my most beloved person, and I thought to myself,wow, if I’m this cold with the memory of my wife’s scent on my sheets, how frigid must she be without mine?”
Still nothing. She’s been somewhat closed-off today, hasn’t she?
“And, therefore,” I begin my conclusion, “I’d like to apologize for not showing up on your doorstep last night and offering to sleep with you, to keep you warm, and to leave your bed with memories of me.”
She halts.
My heart flutters.
She casts a scarlet-faced glare over her shoulder. “My bed hasplentyof memories of you, e-boy.Plenty.”
I glance at her neck, where my bite mark has now since faded away.
She lets Lukas’s hamper sag so she can clamp her hand to her throat, hiding nothing from me, because—as stated—it’s bite-mark-less, and very sad and lonely for it, I’m sure. Ignoringthe sorrows reflected in my own eyes, she says, “Did you…sleep well?”
“I was so cold.”
“Right, but…”
“And the sun? It came right through my window in the morning, without purpose, as it was not coaxing me awake to behold the way it wished to play across your skin.”
She sighs. “Did you have any nightmares?”
