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Like I said, those would be the easy reasons. My mom and Gerard. Callie suddenly marrying Eilish and Neve’s ridiculously good-looking, and much older, former bodyguard to avoid a mob marriage.
Yeah, those are big.
But the biggest thing occupying the most real estate in my head right now is something else.
Or, should I say, someoneelse.
Deimos.
The ghost from my past, who sent me running with threats to never once look back. That same ghost that I told myself I could survive dealing with for one birthday dinner, because he hates this city so much he’d be leaving as soon as it was over.
But then he didn’t.
Maybe it was because of what went down with Massimo threatening Callie like that. In fact, that’s almostdefinitelywhy Deimos is, apparently, staying in New York. But I can’t help but wonder if there’s another reason, as disgustingly narcissistic as it is to think it, given everything going on with Callie. But I can’t help it.
I can’t help but wonder if part of the reason Deimos is still lurking in this city isme.
Me, and our past.
What I saw.
What I swore never to talk about, and, in fact, never have.
Sometimes, I imagine a life where things played out differently. An alternate dimension where the events of my brief time at Knightsblood played out more like a teen drama. Because for a while there, it was so perfectly scripted, so veryHunger Games, orTwilight, orDivergent. The girl with the troubled past, caught between the good boy and the bad one.
It’s pathetic. And super messed up, and probably speaks to a mental condition I’m not prepared to address in myself. But there were times back at school, after I first found that diary, where I used to imagine it was Deimos’.
I used to fantasize that maybe, somehow, it was his journal I was reading. That it washissoul and innermost thoughts I was privy to in a way I wasn’t supposed to be. Thathewas the author of those dark and poetically brutal words: the words that at first I read, and then later responded to, until it turned into a written conversation. For a while there, I was sure of it. That my mysterious diarist-turned-penpalhadto be him.
I was wrong.
OfcourseI was wrong.
Those words speaking from a soul so very much like mine belonged to another. A man who truly understood me. Whosawme. A man I might have loved.
Until the night it all came crashing down.
When Deimoskilled him.
“What in the fuck isstrategic conscientious synergy?”
I start from my thoughts just as Eilish groans and looks up from her study notes. We both turn to glare at the source of the interruption: a tall, good-looking, built, tattooed guy with dark hair and golden-green eyes sprawled in a chair by the study room door.
Since Callie’s birthday, both the Drakos and Kildare families have bulked up on security—which makes sense, considering the festivities were interrupted by Massimo Carveli landing a freaking helicopter on Dimitra’s front lawn and threatening Callie.
And that means that Gavan, being the obsessively over-protective fiancé that he is—which, not gonna lie, is crazy romantic—has his second-in-command, Korol, shadowing Eilish’s every move. Including her study time with yours truly.
Needless to say, as much as she loves Gavan, Eilish isn’t exactly thrilled about the shadow.
“Is that my copy ofGlobal Business Strategyor Dahlia’s?” she mutters, narrowing her eyes at the massive textbook in Korol’s tattooed hands.
He shrugs and makes a face. “Honestly? No idea. This shit is gibberish, though.”
Eilish rolls her eyes. “Well, maybe you should join our class and then it would make sense, Korol.”
He snorts. “Yeah, me and formal education get along about as well as I can understand whatever the fuck this book is talking about.”
“Imagine that,” Eilish mutters under her breath. “Well, some of us need silence to study, so…”
