“I know.”
We pull away from the curb, just a couple of shadows passing through. Not once does Aurora lift her head and not once does Philip look our way.
Not once do they pause to say goodbye to their eldest daughter.
The sun disappears and rain starts to fall on our journey back. Tears shatter and trickle past my window, lost memories and forgotten truths dripping past the gates of my hell.
Thunder cracks and lightening lights up the sky as we descend into the valley. Allow ourselves to be consumed by the forbidden forest, enabling the disease of this town to settle back into our waiting bones.
I used to hate Wolf Hollow because it was my prison cell. A torture chamber of Maleficent’s making, it was everything she designed it to be.
Now I hate it because it’s the only place people like me belong.
Drache Manor staggers into view, sharp and unyielding as the women who live there. Christopher pulls to a stop just beyond the black onyx gates, the snarl of a dragon staring us down.
The engine shuts off and the air grows thick between us.
Heavy, dense with the weight of his packed duffel bag sitting behind me.
“Ask me to stay.”
I turn and look at the dark eyes staring at me.
“Ask me to stay.” His stitches shift with a swallow, “Ask me to stay here with you. And I will.”
“What about your crew.”
“I…” Misery and the shards of a broken heart streak past the surface, “I’ll visit them. We’ll make it work.”
“Your life is in England, Christopher.”
“My lifewasin England, but now I’m offering to start one with you.” He shakes his head, eyes glistening with unshed tears, “I’ll give it up. The stealing, the racing, everything. Just ask me to stay.”
It would be easy to say yes.
To take the larger piece of the heart he’s offering me. The fragments of hope that will only waver the longer he stays in this miserable town.
Wolf Hollow is a disease, and just as I have, it has taken too much from this man. Stripped away layers of his confidence and all but eviscerated the cocky swagger Christopher arrived with.
I’ve seen the light die in his eyes. I’ve felt the unsteady beat of his heart as the people of this town take more than he has to give.
It would be easy to say yes.
But then I would be no better than my mother.
“This is my prison, Devil. Not yours.”
“Prison? Darling, I’m talking about starting a life together. Building ahome-
“I don’t want you stay.”
The laughing faces of Christopher’s crew stare back at me, the family who deserves so much more than a monster ever could.
“It’s time for you to go home.”
“Calista, darling,please-
“You are not a man who begs.” My teeth snap together, rage and sorrow radiating through my callused shell, “And you are not a man who breaks his promises.”
