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“How did you stand it?” I murmur, feeling like my insides are being ripped to threads. “How did you bear it? How… How did you survive?”
She looks me straight in the eye, and says: “You. That’s how.”
I hung my head.
I am humbled beyond words. After everything I’ve done, and more importantly,notdone these four years, and these past weeks… She still says that to me.
I can’t look her in the eye. Besides, it’s not true. I had little, if anything to do with it. It was all her. She is a survivor.
“Eden, can you…? Do you feel anything for me?”
“I feel the same,” she replies immediately.
“The same as what?” I think all of Athens can hear my heart beat.
“The same as always. I never stopped.”
“You never…” I’m going to have a stroke. I wipe the rain from my lips. “Eden, I can’t stand it any longer. I’m drowning here. I’m dying for wanting you.”
“Isaiah,” Skye is suddenly looming over me. His voice is no longer in my earpiece, but right in front of me, real life. He looks as if he’s aged ten years in the space of a couple of hours. Poor guy. The things I do to him. “I will kill you later,” he says with deadly calm, “but right now, you need to get up on that stage. This second, Isaiah. Let’s go.”
Isaiah’s phone
James: Man, what the hell is happening?
James: I should have flown in.
James: You said to pray, but you forgot to mention you were going to cause Armageddon.
James: Isaiah, man.
James: You looked like you are dying on that stage. Literally.
James: Please don’t die, dammit.
forty-two
I don’t even think about it.
I sling an arm around Eden’s shoulders lead her away from the backstage tent. We’re outside, back under the rain, invisible behind the lights. Immediately, five guards circle us as if we’re freaking royalty.
“Don’t let anyone in the circle,” I say to Ren and he nods.
Then I push my lips down to Eden’s. Hers are already tipped up to me, waiting for my kiss.
I’m opening my mouth, my lips tasting her already, when I stop. I don’t know how I find the superhuman strength to control myself, but I do it. I stop a breadth of an inch before her mouth. I can feel her shaky breaths sending shocks of electricity all over my body. This is torture. Pure, simple torture.
“If I kiss you now,” I whisper into her lips. “If I so much as touch you, baby, so help me, I’m not going to stop. I won’t stop, Eden.”
She looks at me. She doesn’t lean in, but she doesn’t hold herself away either. She doesn’t tell me not to stop. She doesn’t do anything. Something is wrong. I panic. I can’t kiss her now, not when there’s something hurting her.
“What’s wrong? Tell me.”
She can’t speak.
“Will you… Can you ever forgive me?” I ask her.
“There is nothing to forgive,” she says so quietly I almost miss it. At least she’s talking now. Talking is good. I inhale sharply, trying to control my mouth that wants to be on hers. “You did nothing wrong. Just… I’m thankful that you have not been feeling sorry for me.” She looks up at me, finally. “Until now.”
