The sound of rope snapping told me Phoenix had gotten loose from the last of his restraints.
Fuck, Morris really was a goddamn idiot. You didn’t tie up a raider like Phoenix. You killed him. You chained him.
He was a predator.
We both were.
Outside, I could still hear yelling… guns being fired in the distance. I knew Blythe and Zero were close, but not close enough to be here for this.
That was all right, though. We didn’t need them for this fight. Morris was bleeding all over the front of his shirt. He lookedweak.
He looked afraid.
He looked like he was seeing a ghost.
“You’re not wrong,” he snapped, but hisfingers were shaking when he reached for his gun. “I can fix that mistake. You and Bishop are exactly the same. You think you can’t die, but I can?—”
Phoenix surged forward without warning, and the loud sound of a wrist snapping when he stomped one booted foot down on Morris’s hand sent a thrill of violent excitement through me.
I didn’t realize how much I’d needed to know that he was dead. He was part of the past Ineededburied.
He was part of the pain that had been so determined to hold me back for so long.
I needed this over.
I needed…
“Let me do it.” The words came out hushed, and Phoenix turned his eyes up to me.
“I can do it for you.” Even as he offered, he yanked the man up by his bad arm, ignoring the scream that tore through him when he twisted his hands behind his back so he couldn’t lash out.
It was strange. I’d spent so long building Morris up in my head like a demon, but beside Phoenix, he seemed so…
Small.
Everything that had haunted me my entire life came down to a narrowed point in front of me.
It came down to Morris, bleeding out in the arms of a raider. And Phoenix, looking at me with those fucking ocean eyes as I bent down to pick up the knife Morris had used to cut him.
“Phoenix…”
My nightmare was in his arms, and all I could thinkabout was the fact that he was here—that he was breathing and whole. That he was okay. That he was strong enough to survive, that I couldkeep him.
I couldhave him.
“I’m going to fucking kill you, Aubrey, I’ll—” I thrust the knife forward, digging it into Morris’s chest and twisting up. It cut his words off in a scream that choked to gurgles as blood filled his lungs, and I did the only thing I could. I used my forward momentum and came up on my tiptoes, leaning over his shoulder to press my lips to Phoenix’s in a kiss that tasted like blood. Like death.
Like that first kiss he’d said we could have had. And I knew…
“I love you,” I gasped as I pulled away and stared at his crimson painted lips.
Fuck. It made sense.
Where else would I have confessed, other than over a dead body, covered in blood?
Where elsecouldI have confessed?
Phoenix’s eyes widened, and he reached around, ripping the knife out of Morris’s stomach and dragging it across his throat in a deep, vicious motion that soaked my front with blood. He threw the lifeless body to the ground as though Morris hadn’t been such a huge black spot in my nightmares—as though he hadn’t changed me.
