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And as I stand out on the curb, blinking up at the balcony where Elena rests inside, a sick feeling takes root in my gut, and then I know.
This won’t be the last I see of my little Persephone.
I’ll be back for her.
CHAPTER11
Elena
He callsmy name from the opposite end of the field, his warm voice carrying through the February air, caressing my skin like the lightest of kisses.
Since that fateful night all those weeks ago, something’s changed in him.
Softened him toward me, made him a different person when it comes to my safety and wellbeing. He speaks to me as if I’m fragile and at risk of shattering at any given moment, always tiptoeing around and holding his tongue.
It’s given rage a home in my bones, makes me want to lash out and hurt him for changing. For amplifying my guilt and shame.
No one knows what happened on Christmas. They don’t know that I was given the greatest gift on my twentieth birthday—a choice. Or, at least, the illusion of one.
For once in my life, my father’s rigid rules and the burden of being a mafiaprincipessahad no hold on my being.
I was free, for that one night. And when Kal Anderson buried himself inside my pussy and soul, I knew there was nothing more I ever could have asked for.
Nothing as perfect as how it felt for our bodies to mold to one another, how it felt for him to justtakethe only thing that’s ever really belonged to me.
It was everything I imagined it would be. More, even, because there’s no way to adequately gauge the raw beast that Kal becomes when he lets himself indulge.
When sin takes precedence, and the innate wrongness of a situation cease to matter to him.
I’ve been unable to think about anything else since.
It wasn’t just poetry that night; it was goddamn magic.
But he was gone when the sun came up, leaving me a hollow husk of a brand-new woman, a black rose, and a scrap of paper that read:
Touch has a memory.
O say, love, say,
What can I do to kill it and be free?
—John Keats
And I hated him for leaving me, again, with nothing but the words of another.
I hate him, still, as I sit in this field of dead grass and flowers readying for the spring bloom, wondering how it is they find it in themselves to grow in spite of opposition. How they can continue on, even after they’ve died for the season.
What makes them want to press forward?
What’s so great about the earth that they return?
Smoothing my fingers over the piece of paper, I tuck it safely in the pocket of my jeans as his footsteps approach, his now-familiar scent of cocoa and cedar catching on the breeze.
The newly formed scar above his right eyebrow shimmers in the moonlight; I don’t know where he got it, but the gash appeared at Christmas and is only just now healing. Whatever the case, he’s unwilling to discuss it with me.
Which is just fine, all things considered. I don’t want to talk about the scars on my neck, or the one on the inside of my thigh that looks like aKif you angle your headjustright.
“Everything okay?” Mateo asks, stuffing his hands in his pants pockets.
