I missed him.
Fuck it. I really missed him.
“It’s done, though?” Palma pressed her original question.
My throat grew thick with emotion.
Heath and Palma never got mad. At me. At Creighton. When I tried pushing it, apologizing, both shut me down. “It wasn’t your fault.” That’s what they both said. I guess it was true. Sometimes I was so twisted up that I no longer could identify what was and what wasn’t my fault. When I offered to move out, both shut me down on that too. Niko as well. She arrived at my bedroom that night and threatened me. “If you ever utter those words again, I will cut up all of your bagsand shred them into tiny pieces. And I won’t feel sorry about it. If I’m here, you have to be here.” I hadn’t seen her since that statement, but I figured she had her way to keep track of everything that went on with the rest of us.
So I never left.
And yes, the war was over. Levi kept me up to date. He told me the terms, but there’d been another meeting just a couple days ago about an AI drone surveillance program. It was set to launch in one more week, but Creighton’s territory would not be surveilled. Since West and Walden’s territories were already banned, that only left Staten Island. Levi said that the entire program was scrapped. It was going to be moving somewhere else. Creighton suggested Florida.
I nodded. “It’s done.”
“Just like that?”
“I think having my housemates kidnapped and my foster brother put in the hospital was enough.”
Her cheeks pinked. “I know.” She got serious again.
I steeled myself because I recognized the look by now. She was going to say something deep, something that would cut straight to the bone.
“Look, I don’t know if you need me to repeat this, but just in case, I am. I’ll say this as many times as you need to hear it. You are not to blame for any of this. The only thing might’ve been a heads-up, but you were trying to hide from it yourself. So it happened. It just did. You moved in. You’re in love with a very scary guy, who does what he does, and because of what he does, all of that spread to us. I get it. Next time going in, we know now. Heath and me. We’re prepared. We’re ready. We aren’t leaving. And by the way, Heath gets to see his brothers again. I didn’t even know he’d been estranged, so I think that part of it is awesome.” She paused, but I knew there was still more coming. I waited. She spoke, almost gently because she knew these words might be hard for me to hear. “I know your thoughts on the kind of guy Creighton is. You don’t condone the lengths he will go for you, but I’m not you. I’m not as nice of a person as you are. Iamokay with it. I careabout you. And obviously he does too. So I’m okay with what he will do to make sure you’re safe. I mean, Jesus, he did all of this because of you. Right?”
My insides hollowed out.
She was watching me keenly. “You see that, don’t you?” She motioned around the room. “The war. Him pushing into this city. You told me that you began looking at this college two years ago. According to Levi, that’s when Creighton began making steps for this war.”
Her words were on repeat in my head.
I was the reason for all of this ...
Ineverthought about the possibility that I was the reason he started down this path, but he only began to fight for control of the streets after I went to Miss Marcie’s house.
He never said a word.
... I won’t be able to guarantee your safety—
I was gutted.
He had done all of this for me,becauseof me. All of it. Since he was sixteen.
I began hyperventilating. I was the cause for so many deaths.
The pressure was suffocating me all over again. I couldn’t be the reason. I just couldn’t. Who was I? I was a no one. A foster kid. I was someone that was thrown away. I was tossed out like garbage, and then I met a boy when I was eight years old and he decided—Creighton’s words jarred me.
I wasn’t born with a soul, Blake. For fourteen years I was walking around, knowing something was different about me, but I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t care. Then one day a little girl gets out of this car and suddenly I got something in my chest.
My lungs stopped. They just completely stopped.
He’d told me. He had. I just hadn’t realized the ramification of how completely he meant what he said.
I met a little girl when she was eight years old, and suddenly I understood the world. You gave me the world. You gave me everything ...
I wasn’t worth any of this, much less this responsibility. How could I process this?
Creighton was obsessed with me, but to be the reason for all of this? It wasn’t right.
