AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Oddly enough, I wasn’t filled with dread the way I knew I would have if this had happened with anyone else.
I thought of a mini Raven running around the house, peals of laughter filling the house.
Huh.Raven was strong. Maybe she could keep whatever evil ran through my veins at bay.
I helped Raven down from the counter, tucked the wayward lock of hair behind her ear, and retrieved our clothes.
Once we were dressed and she leaned down to fiddle with the straps of her sandals, I paused.
Raven was beautiful, kind, and strong. She was thrust into a new life, a new identity, and she came out fearless. She was everything a man could want. Everythinganyonecould want.
I counted down the days in my head until she realized I was not what she wanted, what she deserved. I couldn’t sleep in a house surrounded by a white picket fence. Monsters slept in cages.
Wherever her imagination had taken her about me would soon come crashing down.
“I don’t think you’re a monster.”
Wrong. You just don’t know what I plan to do to my father if he laid a finger on you.
You would be repulsed.
You would be scared.
You would stop rattling the cage that has served as my home.
She stood up and took my hand as if on schedule. I wanted to close my hands in a fist so she couldn’t warm my calloused palms with her soft skin. I wanted to let go. Instead, I said nothing.
I led her back down the hallway, through the dining room, straight out the front door, in my car.
Only then did I let go of her hand, just in time.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Raven
I’d been transported to another dimension, an alternate version of the same reality. The “multiverse” they called it, yes? That’s why we can have more than one Spider-Man?
How else could I explain what happened tonight? It wasn’t like I didn’t know Nico had another side to him, a side that was nothing like the stone-cold killer he showed the rest of the world. But even knowing the kind, warm, and fiercely loyal man he tried to keep buried beneath the surface, it was supposed to end tonight. But it hadn’t. And I had no script, no playbook to tell me what to do next. I didn’t even know where we were going.
He had both of his hands on the steering wheel, and though he was watching the highway in front of us, it looked like his mind was someplace else.
“You’re staring,” he said with a quirk of a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.
“I am.” I couldn’t stop looking at him. “I don’t understand why you didn’t kick my butt to the curb.”
The words spilled out unbidden.
“Have you seen that butt? No man lets go of something so fine.” He smiled again, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes.
There was something he wasn’t saying, or didn’t want to. He was hiding something. I could practically see the shroud of smoke surrounding him.
Do you regret it?
For once, the question on the tip of my tongue did not slip out. It stayed there, settled itself, refused to budge.
“Where are we going?” I asked instead.
“We’re—”
