For the next soft smile to explode in my hands.
That’s what Cassandra doesn’t get. That’s what girls like her never get.
She thinks I’m just another brooding arsehole with a past and a dirty mouth.
She doesn’t see the blood under my nails.
She doesn’t smell the fucking guilt in my skin.
She doesn’t know what it’s like to hold your brother’s dog tags while his mother screams on the other end of the line.
And she never will.
Because I won’t touch her again.
I won’t kiss her.
I won’t let her fall into me, because I know exactly how this ends.
You don’t bring butterflies to a battlefield.
You bury them.
I turn away from the window, fists clenched, throat burning.
Don’t touch her.
Don’t even think about it.
But all I can see is the way she looked at me.
Like I wasn’t a monster.
Like I wasn’t already dead inside.
Fuck.
I’m going to break her.
And I’m going to love every second of it.
Unless I disappear first.
Unless I make her hate me before she ever figures out the truth.
Before she sees the blood on my hands and the ghosts behind my eyes.
Chapter
Eight
Cassandra
It’s been a whole week since I last saw him, and somehow I still can’t erase his eyes from my memory. I still can’t stop feeling the way his hands fit against my body like he’d memorised me in a single night. It’s ridiculous. It’s maddening. It’s like he imprinted himself beneath my skin, carved his touch into the softest parts of me, and then vanished like smoke.
I’ve never felt anything like it. And I know—God, I know—he felt it too.
So why did he disappear?
