“You don’t understand,” he repeated, stepping back again. “You think you’re in control, but you're not. This is just going to make all of this harder on you, harder on me. You almost let me…”
He cut himself off and looked away like the thought disgusted him. I tried to reach for him again, trying to close the space he was tearing open between us, but he stepped away again like one more touch could unravel him.
“Fuck, Eden.” My heart sank at the way he said my name like it hurt.
I wrapped my arms around myself. “You don’t get to keep doing this. You don’t get to be the one who touches me like that and then pretends it was a mistake.”
“Itwasa mistake,” he rasped.
I didn’t flinch, but it felt like I did inside. It made me feel like I was crumbling, falling apart right here in front of him.
“I chose this,” I whispered, my voice so small. “I’m a big girl, I know what I’m doing.”
“You don’t know me. I don’t exist. This?” He motioned to himself. “Me? It’s all fake. Ikill peoplefor a living. I like it. I’m good at it. I was supposed to kill you. Do not forget that.”
His voice faded as he walked to the bathroom, kicking the television as he went.
But I knew that silence now, and it wasn’t apathy.
It was fear.
Chapter twenty-eight
Halo
“Engineered for Damage”
Istaredatmyreflection in the dirty bathroom mirror. The overhead light flickered once, like it was as disgusted with me as I was. It dimmed with a stuttering buzz and then came back just long enough to show me the man I’d become in the mirror. I didn’t recognize him. I looked like someone else, a stranger wearing my hollowed out carcass.
The taste of her was still on my tongue. Her scent clung to my hands like a sinful perfume, both soft and damning. I could still feel the echo of her mouth against mine, still hear the way she said my name like it belonged to her. Like I belonged toher.
Fuck.
She was right there, on the other side of the wall, not even ten feet away. It felt like my entire body was trying to orient itself towards her like a compass, like gravity had shifted and she was the center of the fucking universe.
I pressed my fists against the counter, breathing through my nose in an attempt to push the guilt down, but it didn’t. I’d told myself this was all just instinct, but I knew better. It wasn’t about a release. I could lie to myself all day and say I needed to burn itout, get it out of my system before I snapped in some worse way. But it wasn’t lust, it wasn’t just need. It washer.
It had always been her. From the second I saw her and hesitated. From the moment she looked at me with those wide, impossibly soft eyes and didn’t see a monster but another person. I hated that more than anything.
I should’ve left. I should have walked away. That was the rule, that was theonerule I made for myself: don’t linger, don’t look back, don’t let them matter. Kill the target or leave the job and keep moving. Keep your distance and stay empty. But I stayed, and now I’d done the one thing I’d sworn I wouldn’t. I let her get close. I let hertouchsomething in me that should’ve stayed buried.
She cracked me open by just existing.
What the fuck was I doing?
I couldn’t let her think this meant anything. Couldn’t let her believe I was safe or that I was even real. I wasn’t. Iwasn’t.
She was right. I didn’t hurt her, not physically, but the damage was coming. It always did. Every time I touched something good, it rotted in my hands. That was my legacy, the pattern of my entire life, my curse. That was what Iwas.It had been this way since my sister and I were children. We knew we were born for darkness, and we embraced it in different ways. I chose to capitalize on it. I was the precision, the skill, the constant and reliable, the professional. My sister made it her entire personality. She went by Havoc. She lived to disrupt.Shewas the chaos.
I could still see Eden’s face, the way her eyes started to shine right before she looked away. I knew what that was; I’d seen it before. Hope. It was hope. And I wanted to rip it out of her like it was poison, because it was going to destroy her if she kept believing in me.
I leaned forward, breathing through my lips like I was going to be sick, trying to hold myself together. My reflection stared back at me, jaw tight, blood rising in my ears.
I punched the mirror. Glass shattered, splintering across the sink and floor, tiny reflections of my own brokenness scattered around me like confetti.
I barely felt it. I wasn’t a punch-a-wall kind of guy. That was never me. My anger was cleaner than that, quieter. Right now, I needed something,anything,to bleed. Even if it was me. Especially if it was me.
The worst part of all of this wasn’t what we did, or that I hadn’t meant for any of it to happen. Not the kiss, not the touch, not the way she moaned my name like itmeantsomething. It was that some part of me had wanted and needed it to happen. Not just the way her body fit against mine, but the way she looked at me like I wasn’t just a gun wrapped in flesh. Like I could still besomeone.That’s not something I had ever wanted before. I was fine being nothing more than a shadow that moved through life. Routine and predictability were my standards.
