“Yeah, girl.”
His smile made me smile. “Describe it to me.”
Dev met my eyes, a hint of intrigue sparking in his own. “I used to think I was happy until I met Isaac. But then— One conversation, and I knew I’d never be the same. Nothing about me changed, but my threshold for happiness had drastically risen. Isaac’s like a key to a lock I didn’t know I had.”
I thought about that, about my own happiness threshold.
Devon’s features went all mushy. “We fit together.”
And deep down, fear ate at me.
No part of my connection to Lucas Scott was healthy. He was obsessive and unscrupulous. I was desperate and lonely. The damaged combination didn’t lead to happiness.
But maybe I didn’t want happiness.
Maybe he didn’t deserve happiness.
Maybe happiness was a myth told to children to give hope that the cruelty and unfairness of life might end.
I thought of that conversation with Zara.
When you fall in love, you’ll see. Even when it ends badly, it was still love.
I wasn’t naive.
He was the wrong person. I was looking for comfort in the wrong places. All of this would end badly.
But the electricity in my heart burned. The hotter it grew, the more I liked the pain of it.
Psychological cutting.
I let the metaphorical blood drip over my mind, painting my thoughts red. The color of warnings and anger and violence, of passion and sin and love.
That week, I headed to the house on Evanston with the chill of fall curling about my limbs. I hustled up the steps and slipped through the red door, locking it behind me. The familiar incense scent of the house enveloped me—the fragrance of Lucas’s attempts to control his anxiety.
He entered the room and leaned in the archway to the kitchen. After a sip from his cup—probably peppermint tea—he raised a brow. “Still want me to live?”
“Yep.” I shed my modest outer layers, tossing them to the floor.
With a sigh, he set his cup aside. “Fine. Come try to hurt me.”
After only forty-five minutes of scuffling, I managed to get my hands around his throat securely enough that I thought I might win.
Then he flipped me, reversing our positions, and I gave up. “You know all my weaknesses. It isn’t fair.”
“You should know a few of mine by now.”
A scornful snort was my reply as he pushed away from me to stand. “What weaknesses?”
“Um. I have a trick knee.” He pointed to his left knee.
I narrowed my eyes at his normal-appearing knee. “I don’t believe you.”
“Of course you don’t,” he muttered.
He offered me a hand up, then cursed when I karate-chopped hisweakknee. He fell to the carpeted floor beside me.
I burst into laughter at the shock on his face. “You weren’t lying?”
