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Forcing my mind back to the conversation, I spoke brusquely. “Okay. Anything else?”
“Nothing of use. You can find my intel on the secure server to peruse at your leisure. Nitro will know how to access it.”
I smirked at his use of the words “peruse at your leisure.” He’d come a long way from the boy on the estate that had first hired me all those years ago. Although it was just as likely that it was a front. Creed was a chameleon—he had an ability to fit in with anyone, to get information out of everyone from the smarmiest businessmen to the hardest criminals.
I ended the call without saying goodbye, shoving my phone back into my pocket as my mind shuffled through the details he’d given me.
“Zayde.”
The voice from behind me made me freeze in place.
I hadn’t heard my name spoken by her in so long.
And I’d never heard it spoken this way before.
Hate dripped from the word, raw and savage.
I turned around, meeting those blue eyes that had always been so soft and warm but were now so fucking cold.
“Fallon.”
EIGHT
My entire body was trembling, and I felt sick to my stomach. How could I still have feelings for the person that I hated? How could I love and utterly despise someone at the same time?
“Fallon.” He spoke with a deceptively gentle tone. His icy eyes were shuttered, and I envied his ability to lock everything down, to give nothing away.
Opening my mouth, I inhaled shakily, trying to get air into my lungs. “Why did you do it?” Once the dam had been broken, the words came pouring out in a torrent, words that I’d been holding back for so long. “Why, Zayde? Why did you kill my brother? You took away the most important person in my life, and I’ll never forgive you.” My voice dropped to a whisper. “Never. My brother’s gone, and I’ll never get him back.”
“Fuck.” He ran a hand over his face, his knuckles white under the tattoos that covered them. Against my will, I began noticing things about him. His hair was still a tousled deep brown mess, falling over his forehead, and his eyes were still that same icy, pale blue-grey, fringed by those thick lashes that had always given me butterflies whenever he looked at me. His lips were full and tempting against the shadow of stubble that darkened his jaw, and I knew from memory how soft they felt when he was kissing me. There were differences, though. He had way more tattoos and more piercings than he had the last time I’d seen him. His body had more muscle definition, the body of a man rather than an eighteen-year-old boy. The sleeves of the black T-shirt he was wearing pulled tight around his biceps, and his black jeans hugged his quads in an almost indecent way. The tip of the handle of what I knew would be a wickedly sharp flip knife peeked from his pocket. Even when we were younger, he’d had knives. Maybe it was a product of his upbringing, knives being an accepted part of his world before he’d moved to Alstone, but there was more to it. I knew about the scars that he hid from everyone. The scars that were now tattooed over, hidden unless you looked closely and knew exactly where to look.
I didn’t want to notice. I didn’t want to noticeanythingabout him.
It felt like I was betraying my brother’s memory.
“It was an accident,” he rasped. “I tried to save him, but I couldn’t get to him in time.”
“No, it wasn’t!” My voice rose. “I was there—I saw what happened! And if you hadn’t been arguing with him right by the window, he would never have fallen!”
“Fallon.Fuck. I’m so fucking sorry.”
“Sorry isn’t going to bring him back.” A part of me registered the tears that were spilling over, running hot down my cheeks, but they were secondary to the agonising pain that was like a knife to my chest.
His fists clenched at his sides, his lashes sweeping down as he closed his eyes. “I know. I know there’s nothing I can say or do to make it right.”
“So that’s it, then?”
“What do you want me to say, angel?”
“Don’tevercall me that again,” I hissed, digging my nails into my palms in an effort to hang on to the final threads of my composure. A part of me hated myself for the way I was speaking to him right now. How could something that had once been so pure become so tainted? But that was what we were now. Tainted. Ruined. Broken.
“Why are you here?” he said eventually, after the silence between us grew too heavy to ignore, the sounds of the party unable to penetrate the darkness surrounding us.
I shook my head, at a loss. How could I explain what I barely understood myself? Why was I here, and why had I followed him into this shadowy place where we were all alone? “I don’t know.”
His eyes met mine again, and he took a step towards me. Then another, and another. I should have moved. Should have turned on my heel and run away. But instead, I remained where I was, my breath catching in my throat as he came to a stop right in front of me, so close that I could feel his warm breath on my skin. “I think you do know.”
“Shut up,” I whispered as his head lowered.
