“And you still want this?”
“I’ve wanted this since the moment I met you,” I tell her. “I’ll want it tomorrow. I’ll want it next year. I’ll want it in a decade.”
She laughs, and this time it’s real. “You’re really committing to this, aren’t you?”
“Completely,” I say.
She leans forward and kisses me. It’s soft, tentative. So different from the desperate kiss we shared in the atrium.
When she pulls back, she’s smiling. “Okay then. Let’s try this.”
“Okay,” I echo.
She settles back into the couch, pulling me with her so we’re both stretched out. Her head is on my shoulder, and I can feel her heartbeat against my side.
“Layden?” she says after a while.
“Hmm?”
“Thank you for not letting me go into the dark.”
I tighten my arm around her. “Thank you for not letting me fall in with my father.”
“We’re quite the pair, aren’t we?” she says. “Two hungry monsters who chose each other.”
“We’re not monsters,” I tell her, and for the first time in my life, I completely believe it.
“No?”
“No. We’re just two people who had terrible beginnings and are trying to make better middles.”
She laughs. “And endings?”
“I don’t know about endings yet,” I admit. “But I’m looking forward to finding out.”
She tilts her head up to look at me. “Me too.”
And in that moment, in Phoenix’s small apartment with the sounds of the city outside and her warm body pressed against mine, I finally understand what it means to be full.
Not because I’ve consumed something or taken something or claimed something that was someone elses.
But because I chose to love someone and contentment springs up frominsideme like an endless well.
And miracle of miracles, she chose to love me back.
The hunger that has defined my entire existence is finally,finallysatisfied.
EPILOGUE
One year later
LAYDEN
The villain Italy is exactly as I remember it from the last time we visited. Sprawling stone walls covered in climbing vines, terracotta roof tiles baked warm by the Mediterranean sun, with cypress trees standing like sentinels along the gravel drive. Abaddon’s estate has always felt more like a fortress than a home, but today it’s filled with the kind of chaos that only happens when you gather the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and their families in one place.
Phoenix squeezes my hand as we step out of the car. “Ready for this?”
“No,” I admit. “You?”
