“It felt good to kill him, Scarlett. But it changes you forever. I won’t allow ye to live that way. I don’t want ye to be like that.”
“I’m already worse,” she insists. “I’m the worst thing you ever could have come across.”
“You aren’t.”
She reaches up and grabs hold of my face, crushing her lips to mine and crawling onto my body. Clinging to me in a way she’s never done before.
It isn’t sexual. It’s something deeper. A primal need to feel safe.
“You might think our codes are ridiculous,” I tell her. “But we take care of our women. I’m going to take care of you too. That means righting the wrongs that have been done to ye. Tainting my own soul so that yours will stay intact. I want to do that for ye. And I want you to let me.”
“Rory.”
She’s kissing me now, all over my throat and my face. Distracting me with sex the way she always does.
“Take me back to your place,” she pleads.
“Not until you give me at least one name.”
She groans out her frustration.
“Just give me a day,” she says. “One day, Rory. I’m trying. I am. But I’m not ready.”
I nod, because it’s the best I’m going to get from her.
Twenty-Five
Scarlett
As these affairstypically end when faced with the evil queen, it’s off with his head.
While the worldspins round and evolution takes place bit by tedious bit, there are some things that never change.
Trip’s family summer house outside of New Haven is one of them. It is a mummification of memories. The tomb of nightmares and final resting place for my childhood.
And I was a child, then.
Still innocent and wide-eyed and naïve.
I left here a different person.
I crawled my way out of that shallow grave, and I left all those childish notions- along with my heart- to die the death they deserved. I emerged with an armor that wasn’t there before. A hard-outer shell embraced me and I was reborn.
That shell has served me well.
But it doesn’t make my stroll down memory lane any easier.
The soil feels the same beneath my feet- bare- because I want to be in the right mindset. I want to relive those memories and change the way I feel about them.
The air is cool, the forest still.
This place is a dead zone. Nothing around for miles.
There is a man-made lake behind the house where Trip used to hold ragers throughout the school year.
I never made it to any of those parties.
The only party I’d been invited to was private. On the night of the initiation.
