“I don’t think I should…”
She didn’t have to finish the words. She didn’t think she should contact James, at least not right now. I grabbed her hand. “Hey,” I whispered, “I will be okay here. Bella is treating me like a princess. It’s not like I'm rotting in a dungeon.” I said, gesturing to the room.
“This room was already prepared before you got here, Hals. I think I know who it was for, but I don’t want to jump the gun here…” She trailed off, letting the unspoken words hang in the air.
“You already jumped his bones,” I teased, ignoring the sadness building up in my body, clashing with the small fraction of hope this conversation had created.
She gasped and shook her head. “Haley!”
“S-sorry,” I laughed. It was short lived, ending abruptly as she put her hand on my knee and her other hand into my hair. She rose up slightly, bringing her forehead to mine. My eyes closed as she whimpered my name.
“Don’t be stupid, Kay,” I whispered harshly, my lip trembling.
She chuckled. It was forced. “I’m a dumb blonde for a reason, right?”
Years ago, when Gwen introduced me to Kay, it was on a day where everything in our lives had gone to shit. So, we decided to get drunk. That night, Kay poured her heart out to me, told me she was bullied in school for her hair. She was always called the “dumb blonde,” and later, when she filled out, she was called“the blonde whore.” She always brushed it off, but Gwen and I knew those insults suck with her.
“Nothing about you is dumb, Karina Jones,” I hissed, wrapping my arms around her shoulders as tears fell down my cheeks. She hugged me back, her hand smoothing down my hair.
“I’m going to contact them,” she whispered into my ear, so low that I almost missed it. My hold on her tightened.
“Kay, no.”
She pulled away from me, her hands squeezing my shoulders. Those sky-blue eyes met mine, and there was a new fierceness behind them.
“Don’t be a hero for me,” I stammered, shaking my head.
“You would do the same for me, and we both know it,” she said gently.
“He could kill you.”
“He won’t.”
“Kay—”
“You need to go home. I have a gut feeling that your agent is set to burn the world down if you aren’t in his arms soon,” she explained, her thumbs rubbing up and down my shoulders.
“James will kill him, not to mention that murderous baseball player…remember him?” I half-yelled. Her palm snapped to my mouth, her head turning to look at the bedroom door.
When she looked back at me, there were tears in her eyes. “You aren’t missing your life for me, Hals. You will be happy. You willlive.”
I removed her hand as she stood, my eyes following her. “And what about you, huh?”
She tightened her ponytail as she looked out the window, the sun bouncing off the small waves. “I always knew I was meant to be in the dark, Hals. My life has always had a shadow over it. I think—I think that I was meant to love the darkness.” She looked at me then. “Collin is my darkness.”
I swallowed. “Then promise me—promise that you will be his light. Promise me I won’t lose you. That we won’t lose you.”
There was a knock at the door, and she bent to kiss my forehead, and she was gone.
Bella came in a few moments later with a fresh change of clothes. As she was changing the sheets of the bed I had been a prisoner to, I watched my best friend and her demon disappear in the distance a few minutes later. My hands found my body as they always did.
She never promised me.
“Fuck,” I muttered.
Chapter Thirteen
Collin
