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“You don’t understand. The Saxons have—”
“God, you with the Saxons. The Saxons with you. It doesn’t stop, does it? Will it ever? No. Scarlet.” She caught my arm as I tried to pass her. “I’m here because I love you. I worry about you. You didn’t hear Kai on the other end of the phone, how he sounded. He was terrified for you. And whenKaistarts to worry, what do you think that does to me? To your family?”
I shook her off, avoiding her eye. “Kai’s playing a dirty game.”
“Why do I have to keep reminding you of how much we love you?” Verily’s voice broke. “And why won’t you come back to us?”
I paused, turned. “Your ring,” I said, my voice thick. “It’s beautiful. You and Noah deserve a beautiful life. I mean it. But I’m not meant for that.”
“Oh, Scar. You break my heart.”
I looked to the ceiling where a single spotlight flickered, laughing dully. “It took me a while to realize it, I admit, and I was really good at burying any reminders, but Theo walked back into my life Ver, and I … I…”
“Sax. Fucking Theo Saxon.” Verily rubbed at her lips while she said it, distorting the sound and somehow making it angrier.
“Yes. He’s back. And fighting for his life, because I was too dumb to figure out that he’d returned to protect me.”
“From what?”
“His father.”
Verily slumped, her hip bumping into the railing. “You have to get away from them, Scar. All of them.”
“It’s too late.”
“Never. Come with me right now, and I’ll drive you to your parents. You can stay there, recover—”
“No, Verily.” And I meant it viscerally. “Kai made a mistake asking you to come here.”
Verily stepped up to me, her eyes searching. I let her, my lips frozen into thin lines. “Since when have you become so mean?” she asked softly. “Your parents are desperate to see you.Noahwould love to see you, especially before we get married.”
“It can’t happen.”
Through the silence, Verily’s thoughts must have been ticking. Mine were on lockdown, because any weakness, any hesitation, and I’d be in Verily’s arms asking her how she still loved me.
She broke the quiet by saying, “You know, in another life, in a better one, you would have been my maid of honor.”
I tossed back, “And in that perfect life, he’d be marrying Cassie, not you.”
Her gasp singed every space inside me, sucking up the air, hollow black smoking in its wake. Her mouth tremulous, Verily couldn’t think of how to respond.You bitchwasn’t in her vocabulary. Neither wasgo to hellorfuck youeven though I wished she would fling that kind of hurt at me.
“Go, Verily. You don’t belong here.”
In my head, the tone was a croak, a barely detectable sound above baritone. But she understood. My best friend let it sink in, filling the vulnerable softness of her expression with stone, and cemented my words with a burning, unforgivable stare.
“Each time I see you, you get worse,” she said. She paused at the top of the stairs. “Pretty soon, there will be nothing left of you. And before you tell me how little you believe in yourself, how you’ve decided to put no value on your life, think of it another way. Pretty soon, there will be no one left who cares.”
Her footfalls sounded, laden with the burden of having me back in her life, only to watch me leave again. I clenched my hands, as my fingers trembled and stilled my tremulous lower lip. I blinked back the tears threatening to fall, but there was nothing I could do about the heat in my cheeks, the hot flush of emotion clogging my throat and making it difficult to breathe.
More footfalls came, these ones different, tentative and hesitant.
“She left?” Kai dared to ask, and that was all it took.
“How could you?” I shouted. His reaction was to throw up his hands and startle like a mouse caught with cheese.
“Shh! Easy, Scarlet, the neighbors are already pissed at Marcus’s and my—”
“How dare you bring Verily here, to me,” I hissed, but allowed him to usher me into his apartment and shut the door.
