My heart thumped. “Az, I can’t.”
I lifted my glass to my lips and drank the whole thing down. The gin burned my belly, warming me from the inside out and driving away the chill from the rain. Silently, Az took my glass and refilled his and mine both. Then, he settled back onto the couch beside me to listen. No questions. No demands. Just patient silence. And for the first time in my life, I felt the knots around my fear unravel.
Tears burned my eyes as I took another drink. “You already know who.”
“I have a pretty good idea,” he said in a low murmur. “But I’m not the one who needs you to say it, Mia. You do. Ignoring it will never make it go away. You have to look the past in the eye and tell it to go fuck itself.”
A tense laugh popped from my throat. That was not what I’d expected him to say. “There’s a reason I’ve never told anyone.”
“I know.”
“I don’t want anything bad to happen to her.”
“It won’t, Mia.” He shifted toward me and braced his arm on the back of the couch behind my head. His knee brushed mine. I tried not to stare at where his black pants melted against my skin. “You can trust me with this. I would never tell a single soul.”
My eyes latched onto his, and that familiar electric charge went through me, starting from the spot where our bodies met. It sizzled in my gut like static. The world tunneled in around me, darkening at the edges, until Az was all I could see.
“It was my sister,” I breathed.
He nodded, silent, as if knowing that was what I needed from him right now. A single tear slid down my cheek. It plopped onto my trembling hand that still clutched my drink. Shuddering, I tipped the drink into my open mouth and swallowed hard.
I had never said that out loud.
“My parents,” I said after taking a deep breath. “They refused to believe me when I told them I didn’t do it. They kicked me out of the house. I spent two years sleeping in my car, buying food from some savings I built up during college. I got a full-ride scholarship, so all the hours serving tables at Applebee’s went right into my bank account. Of course, that money eventually ran out.”
“And that’s how you ended up on Serena’s couch,” he murmured, eyes sparking.
I nodded. “I used the last of my money to buy gas so I could drive up here. I thought I could start a new life in New York. Find a job. Thrive in a place where no one knew my name. But everyone looks me up. No one wants to hire someone with such a rocky past. Some think I did it. Others might not, but it doesn’t matter. My name would be attached to their company. No one wants that.”
Except for you.
“Now I understand why it’s so hard for you to trust people.” He sighed, stood from the sofa, and refilled our drinks. When he sat back down, I couldn’t help but notice his chiseled face was a little hazy around the edges. My body had begun to relax despite our conversation and my worries about Serena. Distantly, I wondered if I’d had too much to drink.
“I think we’re more alike than I first thought,” he said.
My attention zeroed in on his words. “What do you mean?”
He reached out and wound a strand of my deep red hair around his finger. My heart stopped as he lightly caressed my thick strands. “You may have realized by now that the Legion is a very close-knit group. We rarely allow anyone into the circle, not unless we trust them. Unfortunately, I trusted the wrong person once. Someone who did not realize I was a demon until our lives were tangled up together. When she found out the truth about me, she did not take it well, even though sheknewme. She assumed the worst. And she took it out on my Legion.”
I shifted on the sofa, my mouth suddenly dry despite the multitude of drinks I’d consumed. “She?”
His lips pressed tightly together. “You’ve met her. Eisheth.”
Right.Of course. The gorgeous vampire who had hosted the party. I should have guessed. They’d been incredibly weird toward each other, and it was because of this. Clearly, they’d once been involved. Not fake involved.Realinvolved.
“Oh.” That was all I could manage.
“She attacked me, stole all of my funds, and stabbed Morax in the gut with my own sword.” He closed his eyes. “Morax fought back. He nearly killed her. But when we found him, she was already gone. A vampire had found her and decided to take her under his wing.”
“You mean, he turned her.”
He nodded. “That was over a hundred years ago.”
“What happened to Morax?” I asked in a whisper.
His jaw rippled as he tipped the rest of his drink into his mouth. “He didn’t make it. She destroyed him completely.”
My stomach clenched, and my hand found his knee. “I’m so sorry, Az. I had no idea about any of this.”
