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Pain flashes across Dare’s face, real pain, and I brace myself.
Don’t.
Don’t.
Don’t.
Don’t hurt me.
“Of course I did,” he says quickly and firmly. “And I do still. Right now.”
He stares at me imploringly and I so want to believe him. I want to hear his words and clutch them to my heart and keep them there in a gilded cage.
But then he speaks again. “You’re not safe, Calla. You have to come with me now. There’s something you need to know.”
“I don’t know where I belong anymore,” I whimper and Dare grabs me.
“You belong with me,” he tells me, his lips moving against my hair. “You don’t hate me, Calla. You can’t. I didn’t lie to you. I tried to tell you.”
His voice is afraid, terrified actually, and it touches a soft place in me, a hidden place, the place where I protect my love for him. The place where my heart used to be before it was so broken, and the emotions, the feelings… they trigger a memory. What he told me to do that night.
“You told me to run,” I say suddenly, and Dare is sadder now than ever.
“I wish you would’ve,” he answers. “Because now it’s too late. We have to ride this out, and if you don’t stay with me, you’ll be lost.”
“You’re my own personal anti-Christ,” I whisper into his shirt. His hands stroke my hair frantically, trailing down my back and clutching me to him.”
“I’m not,” he rasps. “Things are complicated, and I don’t want you to think I’m a monster. I’ve failed you, but I’ll fix it. I swear I’ll fix it.”
“How?” I whisper, and don’t think I want to know. “How have you failed me? What have you done?”
My hand is anchored by Dare’s.
His fingers shake, and it scares me.
“I’ve done a terrible thing,” he confesses, and each word is staccato. “I don’t expect your forgiveness. But I have to fix it. And to do that, I need your help. You have to help me, Calla. Help me save you.”
Save me, and I’ll save you.
That’s in Finn’s journal. Those are Finn’s words, not Dare’s.
Right?
I feel… I feel… I feel.
I feel a wave of déjà vu. I feel a wave of emotion, of sensation, of things I should know but don’t, like there are holes in my brain and details have fallen out and scattered in the wind and blown away.
“What have you done?” I ask him through fractured thoughts. “What do I need saving from? Because I don’t think I can be saved. I’m broken, I think.”
“You’re wrong,” he insists, and his eyes beg me. “I can save you.”
I shake my head and the movement is painful.
“You love me,” he tells me, his stare cutting me into pieces. “You just haven’t realized it yet.”
“I know,” I whisper, throwing those pieces away. “But…”
But
