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“Eli—”
The air shatters with shards of sound that tear through my skull. Gunfire. I can’t see where it’s coming from or who’s shooting. All I see is Claudia running toward me as her reflection runs the opposite way.
That’s not right. How—
I freeze as bullets rip through the old tools and paint cans on the shelf behind me. I know I need to move, to protect Gizmo, but it’s all happening so fast, I can’t think. I can’t—
Claudia barrels into me, knocking me down. Her arms go around Gizmo, cradling my cat to her chest as bullets fly over us. My ears ring and my brain rattles in my skull and I don’t know if the shack has fallen silent or if I’ve been deafened by the noise.
All I know is her.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Antony and Noah tear off outside, their weapons raised. Gizmo wiggles out from her arms and Claudia presses her body into me, her heart and mine thundering against each other. Even though my hearing is fucked up, her beautiful voice reaches my ears, as clear as the emerald ocean. “Eli, fuck. I thought you were—”
“I’m alive because of you.” Something warm trickles over my shoulder. I put my hand up to feel and come away with blood. Her blood. Claudia winces as I touch a wound in her shoulder.
She took a bullet for me.
I want to get her to safety, to take her to a hospital, to pull that damn bullet out with my teeth. But she won’t let go of me. She holds me and I hold her and both of us speak at once as Gizmo jumps all over us in excitement. “Why why why?” I ask. “Why did you jump in front of me? Why did you make yourself a murderer?”
“Because of you. And I would do it again and again.” Her nails dig into my skin. “They have not made enough bullets for the retribution I’ll rain down on the people who try to hurt you.”
“But—”
She cups my cheeks in her hands, smearing Brutus’ blood across my skin. Her touch burns, but a good kind of burn. A cleansing fire that devours me like a phoenix so I can be born anew in the ashes of her love. “Stop talking. You’ve spent your whole life trying to protect other people. You protected me even when I didn’t deserve it, and you protected Mackenzie even though she’s a fucked-up bitch who was horrible to you. No one was there for you when you needed them. Well, I’m here now, and I’m not going to let a piece of shit like Brutus ruin your life.”
I swallow. There’s a raw panic in her eyes – she’s not thinking about the man she just killed or the bullet in her arm or the person who shot it. She only cares about me.
No one has ever cared like that.
I cup her hands and bring her face to mine. I kiss her as I’ve wanted to kiss her since the day she showed up at Stonehurst. I kiss away the distance between us, the secrets and lies that don’t mean shit anymore. I taste the blood of the life she spilled for me, and I know that I’ll never again see the ghost of a girl I thought I loved in her eyes.
Her face, her lips, her dark heart belong only to Claudia August.
She is mine. And I am hers.
She’s my queen, and she’s baptized me in blood.
TO BE CONTINUED
George is Claws’ best friend, and she has her work cut out for her when she heads to university and her roommate mysteriously disappears. Read Pretty Girls Make Graves, set in the world of Stonehurst Prep.
http://books2read.com/prettygirlsmakegraves
“I’ll do anything it takes to get into an Ivy League. I’ll even become theirs.” Find out what the second generation of Stonehurst Prep teens get up to a new dark high school romance, Poison Ivy.
http://books2read.com/elite1
Get your free copy of Cabinet of Curiosities, a Steffanie Holmes compendium of short stories and bonus scenes. To get this collection, all you need to do is sign up for updates with the Steffanie Holmes newsletter.
http://www.steffanieholmes.com/newsletter
My Broken Crown
I hate and love. If you were to ask how
I got this way, I’d have no answer;
but since I can recall, I have suffered
