“Look at me,” I ordered, and she reluctantly dragged her mossy green eyes up to meet mine. She was filled with such sadness that my heart broke.
“There’s nothing to be ashamed of, Lilith. You can talk to me about it.”
Suddenly, her sadness turned to anger. “You’re the last person I want to talk to about it with, Ramel.”
I tried not to physically wince.
I deserved that.
Pinching the bridge of my nose, I sighed. I didn’t know how to do this. I wasn’t a good man. In fact, I was the reason she fucking slit her wrists in the first place. Ididn’t know how to tell her that the sight of her hurting made my stomach ache so much I thought I might die. What right did I have to ask her to stay here with me? I wracked my brain for something real I could tell her. Something that might make her see that despite the fact I was the villain in her story, she had always been the star of mine, even when I had been too lost to recognize it.
“The first time you tried to kill yourself, I didn’t sleep for two weeks,” I said finally, dropping my hand down to my lap.
She was staring at me, her body so still that for a moment, I was worried she wasn’t breathing.
“I couldn’t leave your side. Every time I thought of returning to Hell, all I could think was, what if you tried to do it again and I wasn’t there? What if you managed to do it before I could get there to prevent your soul from detaching?”
Yahweh did not allow souls guilty of suicide to reincarnate. If I hadn’t stopped her, she would have been doomed to float in the oceans of Hell for eternity. I could remember the panic like it was yesterday. The feelings had been so confusing. I had told myself I worried because I would be bored without her around to entertain me, but I had been a fool. It had been more than that. It had always been more than that. No onefearedboredom the way I feared Lilith’s death.
“I thought you were stalking me like that to scare me,” she whispered.
“I was… I was trying to scare you into living.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” she snapped. “I was trying to escape everything you had done to me! Stalking me like that only made it worse.”
I growled. “I wanted you to be afraid of dying. Afraid of spending an eternity stuck with the demon who tormented you your whole fucking life.” A dark chuckle escaped my lips without my permission. “Ironically, I’m now trying to do the fucking opposite.”
She tried to look away again, but I snatched up her chin, forcing her to meet my gaze. “I need you to live, Lilith. I need you here, with me. And not just because Hell needs its queen, but becauseIneed you. I have always needed you. I can’t do this without you.”
“Why should I care what you need when you have never cared about what I need?” she asked. She was still angry, and I couldn’t blame her. A few days of kindness did not make up for a lifetime of abuse and suffering.
“I’m trying to do better in that respect,” I said, gesturing to the bath she was currently sitting in. “But if you don’t want to do it for me, do it for yourself. You deserve better, Lilith. You deserve better than what I’ve given you, but you also deserve better than a lonely, premature death.”
I let go of her chin, and she gave me a long, considering look, as if she was thinking over whatI had said.
“I want to be better for you,” I said softly, forcing past the painful lump that suddenly seemed to have made a home in my throat. “But you have to stick around long enough for me to try.”
Finally, she spoke. “I don’t know what to think or feel, Ramel,” she admitted softly. “On days like today, it’s easy to like you. It’s easy to forget, but then I remember everything you’ve done, and I can’t help but wonder if I’m an idiot for trying to look past all of it. For trying to forgive you.”
“I don’t need you to forgive me, Lilith. I need you to forgive yourself.”
“I don’t blame myself,” she snapped. “I blame you!”
She said it like she wanted to hurt me, but she didn’t believe it enough for it to hurt, and we both knew it.
“No, you don’t.”
Her eyes welled with tears, and I took the champagne from her as her hand began to shake. “If you did, you wouldn’t have fresh scars on your legs, and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
The truth settled over her, and I watched as my words snapped something inside her. Abruptly, she stood up, her face and chest now flushed with anger instead of timidness. Water streamed down her naked body as she got out of the tub, aggressively sloshing water over the floor. She bolted for the door, but I was too fast. I grabbed her by the shoulders, and she shrieked in rage, spinning in my arms and pounding her tiny fists on my chest.
“I hate you!” she screamed, pounding her hands into me over and over as I gently maneuvered her backward until she was pressed against the wall. “I hate you, I hate you, Ihate you!”Tears were streaming down her cheeks, and my heart was shattering as I watched her battle with herself.
“That’s not true either, deathtrap,” I said gently, holding her firmly against the wall, more to make sure she didn’t slip and hurt herself.
“It is true!I hate you! I’vealwayshated you!”
She didn’t though, and that was the problem. She didn’t hate me, and she felt like she was betraying everyone she had ever loved by not being able to hate the demon that had killed them.
