“From now on, if you bleed, I bleed,” he promised, pressing my fingers more firmly into one of the gashes. I moved to jerk my hand away, not wanting to hurt him any more than I already had.
“Ramel.”
“No, Lilith. Listen to me,” he said firmly, leaning into my touch as if he wanted to make it hurt as much as possible.
I hesitated.
He needed me to hear him, and I didn’t have the strength to fight. When he was sure I wasn’t going to try to pull away again, he continued. “I can’t take back what I did to you, but I can promise that I will never hurt someone you love again.”
I could feel his pulse through the wound he had pressed my fingers against, and a tear slid down my cheek at his words.
“I promise that unless they hurt you first, I will never kill another person you have not asked me to kill.” He searched my eyes, and I could see that he meant it. I believed him. “I don’t want to hurt you any more than I already have.”
“You told me you would always hurt me,” I whispered. My gaze was tethered to his, and the air around us nearly crackled with electric tension.
“Not like this,” he responded, gently rubbing a thumb over my bandaged thigh. “Never like this. Not anymore. I love you, Lilith.”
I frowned, still feeling like I was having trouble breathing past the massive pit of despair that had infected my heart. I shook my head.
“You don’t love me, Ramel. You loved whoever I was before I was reborn as a human.” I knew this because the other Lilith lived in my mind. While we were thesame person, we were also different. We were close but not identical. He loved a person who didn’t exist anymore. He didn’t love me.
No one loved me.
The aching loneliness I had felt my whole life roared in my ears, and I felt another rush of anxiety pool in my arteries. I closed my eyes against the sting of emotion, feeling more tears slide down my cheeks through my lashes.
“You don’t even know me,” I whispered. I felt him touch my chin gently.
“Look at me, Lilith,” he ordered, though his voice was soft. I looked down at him nestled between my knees, and bit back another sob. How could I feel so alone when he was right here in front of me?
“Idoknow you, deathtrap.” He rubbed his thumb gently over my bottom lip, pulling it out from between my teeth. I hadn’t even realized I had been biting it. “Do you need me to tell you all the things I love about you? Because I will.”
I stared at him, unable to respond. The corner of his lip lifted, though his eyes remained sad.
“Well, for one, I love how much you like to cook. Especially from scratch. You like to set up little stations and make perfect little pasta because it gives you something to do with your hands and allows you to escape the thoughts in your mind.” He reached up and stroked the side of my face tenderly, brushing a thumb over the gentle swell of my tear-stained cheek.
“I love how hard you work. When you put your mind to something, you don’t quit until you’ve accomplished it. I saw it at Voodoo. You had nothing when you started there. I watched from the shadows as you ruthlessly overcame every obstacle you found in your way. You got yourself an apartment at eighteen with no one to help you.”
Another hot tear slid down my cheek, and he wiped that one away too.
“I love how easy it is to tell when you’re nervous because you always chew on your thumb.” He ran a finger over the thumbnail on my left hand, which was quite a bit shorter than the one on my right. I frowned; he was right. I hadn’t even noticed that I did that.
“I love how when we worked together, you never let me work the service bar.”
I surprised myself by letting out a tear-soaked laugh, and his smile widened. “What? You thought I didn’t notice you always stuck me with the bar?” He grinned at me. “You loved working service, which makes sense. You’re a natural problem solver, so working out which drinks to make at which time makes you feel like you’re solving a puzzle. You always used to get a little satisfied look on your face when you crushed a rush of orders in record time.”
I sniffed, unable to fight off the small smile that was beginning to tug at my own lips. “You were too slow. It just made sense for me to work service.”
He let out a low chuckle and rolled his eyes. “Sure, deathtrap. I’m a wizard on service, and you knowit.”
I stuck my tongue out at him, and he laughed softly. “Put that tongue away. You’ll distract me, and I’m not done.” He stood up and hosed the blood off his chest, then turned off the shower. Scooping me up into his arms again, he continued with his list of reasons he loved me as he carried me to the bed.
“I love that you like scary movies and TV shows. You like the classics, but your favorite director is Mike Flanagan. You’ve seen all of his Halloween specials multiple times, and you love working out the underlying messages hidden beneath all the horror. You do this because you believe there’s a lesson to be learned, no matter how bad things get. You fiercely believe that if you look hard enough for a positive, you’ll find it there staring you straight in the face.” He placed me gently on the edge of the bed and reached behind me to undo the clasp of my bra. He pulled the wet fabric off and gestured for me to lift my hips so he could slide off my now blood-stained panties.
He didn’t so much as touch my naked body. I watched him make his way to the wardrobe and pull out one of my old cotton band T-shirts and a pair of cozy sweats. Returning to the bed, he helped me into the sweats and tugged the T-shirt over my head.
When I was dressed in the dry, soft clothes, he gestured for me to lie down. He quickly changed into a pair of black sweats and lay down next to me, tucking me into the crook of his arm.
He dropped a kiss on my head and tilted my chin up so he could meet my eyes once more.
