AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“The night of Asher’s wedding.”
And I’d seen him after that. Had I been the last person to see him? It couldn’t be a coincidence that Vince had visited me just before he went missing.
Why are you here? I’d asked him.
Closure.
What else had he said?
That I had his blessing with Bastian.
To heal him. To save him. To cure him. To be his family when I cannot.
Those weren’t the words of a man prepared to live.
They were the words of a man preparing to die.
But I couldn’t tell Bastian that.
He’d never understand without me explaining the whole conversation to him. The one where Vince had revealed he knew all my dirty little secrets, all my destructive lies entombed in one deceptive package.
Instead of telling the truth, I buried myself in a deeper hole, one dug by guilt and filled with remorse. “Stay.”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s late. Your sister needs her sleep. I’m guessing you’re going to wake up to search for Vincent in the morning, and you’re going to need your sleep. I have a pull-out couch. The mattress is awful, but it’s better than waking Tessie up, driving to your place, and falling asleep just to wake up hours later. So… stay.”
“Where will you sleep?”
“The couch bed is big enough for the both of us.”
He nodded his head, his eyes thanking me instead of his words. The relief in his shoulders only dug the guilt deeper beneath my skin until my fingertips burned with the need to scratch at it.
And when we both dipped under the covers and he wrapped an arm around my waist like he couldn’t help himself, I felt like the worst person in the world.
Not Jupiter.
Not even Ganymede.
Apate.
The goddess of fraud and deception.
Chapter
Twenty-Six
Why must my duty require me to break my own heart?
RACHEL HAUCK
ARIANA DE LUCA
Days Missing: 2
I woke up to an arm around my waist and stayed as still as my breathing would let me.
I’d lost feeling in my right hand. Inching it up into the air, I shook it lightly, trying my best not to wake Bastian up.
