My head spins. Ilose my voice.
I can’t reconcile the sweet Kian with the brutal Elias. What happened to him? How did the boy who wanted to save lives become the man who takes them?
A mocking smile curves his lips as he advances toward me.
Unwittingly, I back up, my breaths thready. Every sense sharpens, zeroed in on the predator showing me his true colors.
This can’t be.
We stand under the elm tree in Hollow Gardens, looking at our carving.
“I don’t want you to leave,” Kian murmurs, linking his fingers with mine.
My insides twist, and I fight the urge to cry.
“I don’t want to go either.” My lips tremble and I face him. “But don’t worry. I’ll come back for college. You can be a vet, and I’ll be happy as long as we’re together.”
His eyes glitter, green eyes rimmed with gold. I brush his hair over his ear. It’s so long now, the brown roots creep into the blond, telling us our time is up.
“You promise?” he rasps, voice thick. “What if I can’t save up the money—”
I press my finger to his lips. “We’ll find a way. But for now,” we face the tree again, and I trace the etched words, “we still have my birthday next week. One last celebration.”
His heat presses upon me, jolting me back to the present. The eyes. The divot on his chin. The similarities, while not plentiful, are there. It is the same person, but my mind refuses to accept it.
A dark laugh slips from Elias’s lips, cruel and cold. “Kian’sdead. He died with them.”
His words spear into my chest, the pain robbing me of my breath.
He leans down until we’re a hairbreadth apart. His cologne of vetiver and smoke, now polluted with the metallic sting of blood, fills my nose.
“I don’t believe you.” Not looking at him, I shake my head.
Denial is the only course of hope.
Elias shakes my shoulders. “He’sdead. You killed him! He died the day Saints Hollow burned down. Elise and Kian? Fairytales for kids who didn’t know better. This?” He gestures at the corpse on the floor. “This is real life.”
His words are nonsensical. Mad ravings from a lunatic.
“Don’t you dare pin this on me!” I slam my fists against his chest, fury finally surging up my spine like a tidal wave. “I didn’tleaveyou. I left, but didn’t—”
But then I make the mistake of looking up.
Pain floods those emerald eyes. Hands caging me in, arms shaking from restraint, he stares at me as if I stole his world from him.
He stares at me as if he were on the brink of death and I was his last breath of oxygen.
My tragic heart, lovesick and broken, makes the mistake of latching onto the one man who was once my everything, who, even now, under a different identity, makes me feel too much.
My body awakens. “Für Elise” hums in my mind.
Some songs you only need to hear once to remember for the rest of your life.
My hands move on their own. I fist his shirt and pull him flush against me.
“I willnevergive up on you, Kian,” I whisper.
A sharp exhale. A beat suspended in midair.
