Merlin’s little grip was as unwavering as his was supposed to be.
I stopped in front of him, watching him carefully.
He searched my eyes before nodding. “Then let’s go.” He led the way to the car, letting Lucy in the back before letting me in the passenger seat, closing the door behind me.
I settled back in the seat, staring out my window. This was good, this would be healthy. I would get out, get some sun, maybe heal a little more. I was making good progress, I was sure of it.
I was sure.
~~~
We drove to an apartment building in the middle of the city. The sidewalks filled with people, the streets with cars. I wasn’t too worried about the amount of people there were. This was Everett’s job. He knew how to get away with murder. He had done it hundreds of times.
He pulled the car over and shut it off, sliding on his mask with ease. “You don’t have to wear a mask, he’ll be dead in anhour,” he told me, but made no move to get out.
I watched the people walking by, living their daily lives, and wondered what they would think of us when we got out. A man in a mask, dressed like he was heading to a photoshoot, and a woman with a bright pink collar around her neck, littered in scars with a mouse on her shoulder and a wolf on her right side.
I certainly wouldn’t be blending in. Not even a little bit.
“It’s powerful, you know,” Everett began quietly. “Knowing that they fear you.”
I looked over, finding his eyes, the chill gone for something else. Something deeper. He was watching them too, reading my mind like he always had, as if no time had passed at all.
“I know you always had this persona of this woman of sunshine and light,” he went on, finding my eyes. “Kindness and goodness radiating from you, but you’ve always had fire in there too. That’s what I saw in you the day I first saw you, despite my denials. You were my own personal sun, made of molten lava, lighting up my world in a way no one else ever had. You, Olivia, have always been fierce. Just because it feels different now, doesn’t mean it is. Your voice doesn’t have to be the only power you have left. You have more. You’ve always had more.”
My face twisted as I watched him, his words falling into me like fucking…bullets.
I turned away from him, glaring at the road, trying to decipher what I was feeling, trying to understand the emotions pushing against my skin.
God, I hated this. I hated whatever was wrong with me. I hated that I couldn’t figure out how to fix it.
I wanted to fix it.
I needed to fix it.
“Are you angry, pup?”
I felt a breathlessness fill me at his sentiment. At his voice.Low and sultry. Ever the same. If I had not just seen the look on his face, I might have believed he was the same as he always had been.
Fuck! What was his goal with this? To make me feel worse? To make me feel likeIwas the problem? I knew I was the problem! I was fucking trying! I wastrying!But I didn’t know how to push through this without—
My heart started pounding way too fast, my hands clenching into fists.
I closed my eyes and shook my head, trying to swallow it down, trying to control it. No, not here. Please, please don’t do this.
“I don’t know how to help you,” he confessed, his voice low as if this were a secret he was worried the ghosts of this world would overhear. “But I’ve been doing a lot of learning since we brought you home, and I know you. I know how you were after you watched Steven die, after you watched us kill that man who attacked you. I’ve spent so much time considering my first steps. Considering every possibility, every outcome, every potential trail we could wander down, and do you know what I’ve learned?”
His voice was a song I had missed more than I missed air. I hadn’t realized how addicted I had become to just that, just his voice, until now. Until I went without it for so long. Fuck, I missed him. Ifuckingmissed him.
“I learned that aftercare can come in all shapes and sizes, and sometimes, it can mimic certain things. So long as you feel safe, so long as you feel…calm,” he decided after a few seconds of humming the word ‘feel’, “it helps. It’s not about what the world sees, it’s about what ultimately helps you. So, before I…enactmy little plan, which I hope will help, I’m going to tell you something that I hope might kickstart it.”
My brows pulled together, and after a second, I turned backto him, finding his eyes as cold and chilling as they always had been. Icy blue, endlessness in their depths, a deep-seeded darkhatredswimming within them.
It caused my skin to tighten, staring at him. It caused my heart to stutter and my hand to tighten into my own thigh.
“I hated you, and that is not a lie,” he told me, my entire body going cold. “For a good…a good two minutes, I felt a deep, unfamiliar kind of hatred towards you when you told me goodbye.”
His entire body was tense, his shoulders tight, his jaw working so tightly, I worried his teeth would crack.
