My heart sank.
I messed up. I should’ve been paying attention, should’ve thought this through. Oliver said he’d look after Aspen. He told me to take time to think and process away from him. So why did I stop at their damned room?
“It’s not…”
What you think?I didn’t know what he was thinking, and I sure as Heavenly Hell didn’t know what I was. What words could I possibly say to remove his deafening silence?
He continued keeping his back to me.
I crept over to my door and stood beside him. He gazed at the wood, refusing to shift his attention. I grabbed the shadow-coated doorknob, thinking that going into my room would somehow make up for my lapse in thought.
“Don’t,” he said, slowly turning to me. His mask was on; shadows covered the gold in his eyes. “Go check on him.”
“Ronen, I wasn’t going to. I just—I don’t?—”
He slid his hand into my hair and kissed my forehead, rendering me silent.
“It’s okay, Hellion. Sleep in whatever room you choose.” Then he walked away, leaving me stunned.
I saton my bed with Cato’s book in my lap, reading the same sentence on Inviso for probably the tenth time.
“Get it together,” I snapped at myself.
Ronen was fine.
Yeah. Like I’d be fine if Moira were still alive and he was bonded to her—stopping at her room after a mind-altering date. Totally. Fucking. Fine.
My head fell back against the headboard. “What am I doing?”
I slid Cato’s book aside. If I didn’t take the time to process, as Oliver had suggested, I’d never be in the right mindset to dream-walk and actually help my mom.
So I dove in.
After being cut off from people and reading stories about other people’s adventures, lives, and romances, it only made sense that my mother and I fought as much as we did. She wanted to suffocate me with her protection and fear. I wanted experiences. I wanted to fall madly in love. I was a teenager with no future. A piece of me died every second my mom kept me locked away. And that was how she wanted it, for the rest of my life. So paired with her revealing her secret about hiding me from, well, everyone, I wasn’t okay. And I never thought I would be.
Until Aspen.
In the hallucination I showed him, I had told him he saved me the night he covered me in the forest. But he didn’t. He freed me—opening my eyes to the possibilities of love and life. I’d become addicted to his visits and those dimples I sometimes tugged out of him.
I fell in love with him.
Yes. Fell.
Looking back on everything, I realized I’d been deluding myself. I’d always been in love with Aspen. At least parts of him.
I loved the way he listened to everything I said in rapt silence. I loved how, on the rarest occasions, laughter sprang from his lungs. When the Hell Rune’s influence quieted beneath my touch and he smiled, he shone with the purest light. It transformed him. He dazzled, exuding an energy that made everything seem possible. He was like sunshine. But I only ever got tastes of it—caught between moments and a mystery that left me wanting.
Then there were times when he became cold and detached. Times he refused to give me even a sliver, and the mystery around him turned frustrating. He said he was protecting me. But the secrets between us became too much. We were becoming my mother and me. We even fought like it, when I’d thought he was my solace away from home.
Now he was willing to share anything with me. Give me anything I wanted. And I knew once he forgave himself for his past, he could outshine just about anyone.
Then there was Ronen.
He hadn’t freed me the way Aspen had. He’d done something quieter and somehow more terrifying—he’d made me feel like I already belonged somewhere.
Even more than that, he made me feel safe.
Not like the safety of walls and locked doors my mother had built around me. Walls could be torn down, doors unlocked. His safety, even when he blocked the bond, felt absolute. Never-ending.
