He took another step forward, but I held my ground. Just because he was taller than me didn’t mean I was going to let him intimidate me. And after I’d let him touch me in my dreams, when I woke and remembered what it felt like to lay my head back against his shoulder…
He wasn’t going to scare me. But I could feel something inside me slowly getting more and more angry at the fact that he couldn’t tell me the truth—angrier still that I’d let myself get so wrapped up in the feelings ofmaybethat he was hurting me now.
He wasn’t allowed to hurt me any more than he already had.
“Tell me what you’re doing.”
“No.”
That one syllable sounded so final, and my eyes narrowed. “What’s the point then, Sephtis?”
Anger. Hurt. Pain. A lifetime when I was younger of dreaming about someone who looked just like Sephtis, of telling Caiden about it when I was small. A year ofagonywhere his face was the one thing that reminded me of everything I’d lost.
A week of standing with my eyes closed, holding his hands and wondering if there was something past all that pain that existed in a field of red.
And now this. A lie. Proof that I was wrong.
“Cole…”
“No, I’m serious.” I brought my hand to my chest, ghosting my finger over that place where the red thread connected us. “What’s the fucking point? I don’t know why I let myself think for even a second that I could… what… trust you? I don’tknowyou. All I know is what you did, and what you are. And I know what you aren’t.”
My fingers opened and shut, clenching and unclenching over that space where the red thread was.
“You don’t understand.”
“It’s just this fucking thread making me feel this way.” My fingers clenched again, and I felt it—the slightest resistance. Heat in my palm.
A thread. A lie. Hope that I couldn’t let myself feel. I’d accepted the pain, the loss, the emptiness… and he’d made me…
Fuck, he’d made me feel something.
“Cole…”
“No.” I shook my head. “If you can’t be honest with me, what’s the point?”
I stepped back as he reached for me, yanking at the same time. I wasn’t even sure what it was going to do, but I didn’t expect it to hurt.
And it fuckinghurt.
It hurt so much my knees felt weak, so much I instantly collapsed. I looked down and saw frayed edges of red, still attached to the center of my chest. The thread was still clinging between us, like it was too stubborn to let me loose from the feelings I didn’twantto feel.
But all around it, white was slowly leaking through.
It bubbled around the frayed edges of the thread, with little tendrils of black snaking through the shimmer.
“Fuck.” It came out on a hiss of pain.
Sephtis caught me before I hit the ground, and his hand instantly pressed over the spill on my chest like he could stop it from happening. And fuck me, I was even more angry that his arms around me feltgood.
“Why did you do that?” His fingers stroking my chest made the pain spilling through my body dull, but it wasn’t enough to fix whatever it was that I’d done on an impulse, and apparently the pain made me honest.
“It’s easier to deal with you lying to me when I can hate you.” When I didn’t have the softest memories of him holding my hand, the knowledge that he’d done it every night. When I didn’t have to wonder if every bad thing that had happened to me was happening to get mehere.
“The thread didn’t make me care. It didn’t make you…” He trailed off, his hand sliding beneath my shirt so the coolness of his palm stole away more of the sting. The frayed edges of the red thread were twisting back together, but that trail of white was still pooling at the edges and streaming out. I was pretty sure the only reason it wasn’t soaking the front of my shirt was because Sephtis’s hand was there, absorbing the shimmer so it could join the moonlight beneath his skin and press back into me.
Moonlight beneath his skin… fuck, why did he have to be so pretty?
“Stop it.” I sounded far away when I said it, but he was already picking me up and carrying me down the hallway.
