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I just pray that I’ll have the chance.
Heaven only knows the world hasn’t been super friendly concerning the word “later” when it comes to us.
14
ELLIE
“No, that’s impossible.” I shake my head vehemently as I attempt to process what Raymond just told me, turning it around and around in my mind, looking at it from every angle, studying it beneath a microscope like a dissected butterfly pinned between two slides. “That’s not true.”
My parents barely knew how to use a computer before they died, for fuck’s sake. They wouldn’t even begin to know how to code an app as elaborate as the one on Harvey’s phone.
And my parents would never, ever partake in the twisted and depraved stuff that POP does.
Raymond scratches absently at the beard lining his jawline. His eyes—so similar to my late father’s that it’s almost eerie—ensnare mine. There’s so much…pity in his gaze. The sight of it makes me want to scream, even as knots of apprehension twist in my stomach and my eyes burn with prickling heat.
“I didn’t want to have to tell you this, kid.” Raymond rubs his hands against his thighs as he focuses on something over my shoulder, something only he can see. A memory, perhaps?
“Tell me what?” My voice is barely above a whisper.
Landon places a reassuring hand on my knee, and Ryker inches even closer, until his leg is flush against my own. Only the feel of my two men—and the heat they emit in almost palpable waves, warming me better than any fire could’ve—keeps me from spiraling.
“Our past.” Raymond’s blue-gray eyes hold my own, and he takes a deep breath, as if readying himself for whatever he has to tell me.
My heart skitters—a pebble being tossed across glossy waters—before sinking to the bottom of my stomach.
Why do I have the feeling that whatever he wants to tell me is bad? Really, really bad?
Worse than the discovery that my parents were behind the creation of Luminescence—Find Your Match?
And that it’ll shake the foundations of my freshly built world?
“Ellie, your parents…” He heaves out another prolonged breath. “Your parents used to be members of the Paragons of Prosperity.”
Time stops. Or maybe that’s just me. Maybe I simply stop. I thought I had become desensitized to bombs being tossed into my lap, but apparently not. They still have the capacity to destroy me, decimating not only myself but the world around me.
No. He has to be lying. He has to be.
My parents wouldn’t have joined their cult. They wouldn’t have.
No. No. No.
And yet…
A strange hurt has chiseled itself onto my heart. Every breath I take is paved in agony, scorched in fire. My lungs are burning.
“Explain,” Landon barks, his tone sharper than I ever remember hearing it. Which is saying something, because he really only has two moods—pissed and more pissed.
Raymond glances down at his lap, as if it pains him to stare directly at me.
“We were your age when your parents were recruited. We all attended Grove Academy together—me, your mother, and your father. Your parents had been together for about a year at that time.” A wane chuckle escapes him, though it lacks any true amusement. “Though your mother hated your dad back then, probably just as much as she loved him. Thought he was a prick.”
“And they willingly joined?” It hurts to breathe around the iron vise squeezing my heart.
“Keep in mind, I heard about all of this secondhand. I don’t know how much is true and how much is fabricated. I only know what they told me and what I saw myself. But yes. I don’t believe they knew the true purpose of the cult back then. They were told they could gain riches and power. And as two trust-fund, nepotic babies with superiority complexes?” Another chuckle. Another self-deprecating smile. Another heavy sigh. “All they had to do was believe in a goddess. It sounded too good to be true, and I suppose it was.”
My stomach curls in tandem to my hands wrapping around Landon’s and Ryker’s kneecaps. God, I want Raymond to stop talking. I need him to. I feel adrift and weightless, like I’m floating somewhere above my body watching the scene unfold, unable to stop it. I’m witnessing a damn train wreck, but I can’t look away.
I don’t want to.
