“Savvy,” Sebastian sighs, his eyes closing as his hands loosen from Killian, releasing him.
“Just go,” I plead, “It’s over between me and Killian anyway, we’re done. It won’t happen again but please don’t hurt him, I am begging you.”
Finally, Sebastian steps back from us both, his eyes bouncing around my face, “Get a bag ready,” He orders, “You’re staying with us a few days.”
“Bast…”
“Don’t fight me on this, Sav,” Bast tugs a strand of my hair, “Meet me at mine in a couple hours.”
“Okay,” I sigh.
Bast steps toward the door and Killian follows. I meet his fathomless eyes and for once they’re not shuttered, they’re not closed off but what I see shatters me. Pain, so much fucking pain, and longing and regret. He stares at me like I’m the moon in his skies but I’m disappearing, no longer there to light up the darkness.
“I’m sorry,” He whispers, lifting his hand to run his thumb across my bottom lip.
“I know.” I rasp, the burn of the tears making my throat tight.
“No,” His hand drops, “You don’t.”
He walks out without another backward glance, pushing past Sebastian to head to his car on the street. He gets in, starts it and drives off without even a flickerof his eyes on the house again and it’s right, it’s what needs to happen so why does it feel like my world has just stopped spinning?
“See you soon,” Bast says to me gently before he too leaves, getting in his own car to drive home, leaving me in the silence of my house. The weight of the truth sits heavy against my chest, everything Killian told me feeling like a story from a book but deep in my soul, I know it’s real.
It was never supposed to happen, Savannah. I was never meant to fall in love with you.
Is this really what love is supposed to feel like? Am I meant to feel as if I am falling apart at the seams?
You loved me too, you know?
I think I’ve always been in love with Killian in some way, in the forbidden, can never be touched way. It was out of reach; beyond a line I couldn’t cross or so I thought.
But apparently, I had it and I lost it anyway.
Numbly, I head through the house, going toward my bedroom where I pull a duffel from the closet and pack several days’ worth of clothes inside before I add my toiletries and other things I may need on top. I shower and change, going through the routine of a normal day as if my whole life isn’t burning on a funeral pyre and then I call a cab and I make my way over to Sebastian’s house where I spend the next day holed up in their spare room, alone and thinking about where I go from here and how exactly I’m supposed to move forward.
Chapter Fifty-two
“Come on, Sav,” Willow says gently at the door, “Just let me in so we can talk.”
It’s been two days since Bast demanded I come stay here and I’ve barely left the room. I am exhausted, especially after I was woken up at three this morning from a dream that wasn’t a dream at all.
It was a memory, of Killian and me shopping for my house, of him showing me his little book of sketches, dozens and dozens of them after I’d told him I didn’t believe he knew what he was talking about when it came to art.
‘Proof enough, Tiny Dancer?’He’d whispered, his fingers lightly tracing my ribcage, ‘Or would you like to feed me more so I can immortalize us forever?’
I shiver as the sound of his voice echoes through my head.
‘You are art. A masterpiece I will never tire of creating.’
Fresh hot tears track down my cheeks. I am so sick of crying but with each new memory I regain, the more it hurts and the more they come. It’s like my own story is unfolding inside my brain, a book being written and I know the pain is only going to get worse. I haven’t spoken to him since I left to come here a couple days ago though he’s tried. I’ve since switched my cell off.
“Savannah,” Willow sighs, “Please.”
Swatting at the tears on my cheeks, I uncurl my legs from beneath me and stretch as I stand, body stiff from lack of exercise before I cross to the door and flick the lock, opening it to find her and my niece on the other side. Hope is a sleeping bundle in her arms, a flash of red hair to match her mother’s poking out the top of swaddled blankets.
“Here,” She gently but surely, shoves my baby niece into my arms, forcing me to take her.
“What are you doing?” I whisper hiss, fumbling to get my arms around the baby without waking her.
