Devils & Thieves (Devils & Thieves #1)(65)

“What? Are you kidding me?”

“Listen to me. Jane said one of us would die tomorrow, but it’s just past midnight. It is tomorrow. And I think she meant me, Jemmie. So it’s okay.” He gave me a brave smile. “No guilt, all right?”

“It’s not you,” I whispered. I gave him an apologetic look as his smile faded. “I grabbed Jane’s hand as Hardy was dragging her away. She said it was going to be me.”

Even in the darkness, I could see the blood drain from Crowe’s face. “Tell me you’re lying,” he demanded, his voice breaking.

“If this is how I die, here with you, then I’m okay with that.”

“Goddamn it, Jemmie. I will not be the one to kill you.” His hand shook.

I closed my eyes, breathing deeply even as I felt the barrel of his weapon against my skin. “If that’s what it takes for you to get out of this and go save all those people, then you have to do it. Your sister. My parents. Our friends. They’re depending on you.”

“What about you?” he whispered.

I opened my eyes. “I guess my story might end right here. But it’ll be quick, right?” I sounded a lot braver than I felt. Hopelessness was tearing at my heart.

Crowe started to shake his head, then hissed as I brought the knife to his throat. He froze. “I can’t be the one,” he said in a low voice. “It would kill me anyway. I only ever wanted to keep you safe.”

I offered him a tremulous smile. “Is that why you told me to leave Hawthorne?”

“You really want to talk about this right now?”

“What better time? This is probably the last conversation we’ll ever have.”

“Yes,” he said quickly. “I thought you’d be better off far away from this place.”

“You mean far away from you? From what you might have to do, now that you’re president of the club? Is that why you got with Katrina, too?”

His eyes slid away from me and he swallowed, his Adam’s apple sinking. “Yes.”

“I think that’s horseshit.”

He smiled. “Did you just say ‘horseshit’?”

“I’m serious.”

“I can tell.”

We fell into silence again. Crowe shifted his weight an inch on the woodpile, and without thinking, I pressed the blade to his skin. He pushed the gun harder into my forehead.

“Sorry,” he muttered.

The harder I fought Darek’s order, the less control I seemed to have over my body, the more compelled I felt to listen to my hand instead of my head. It was only a matter of time until one of us wouldn’t be able to hold back the urge to kill.

I didn’t want to die not knowing the truth.

“Did you ever love me?” I whispered. “Was I ever more than just a distraction?”

Crowe blinked. “Jemmie.”

“If I’m going to die, I want the truth.”

“Yes. I loved you. I love you. I’ve never stopped.”

My shoulders fell, and Crowe seemed able to ignore the shift in my posture, though his eyes squeezed shut and his gritted teeth were telling me it wasn’t easy. I’d been waiting over a year to hear him say those words. Now he had, and it was bittersweet. Because I was going to die today, one way or the other. I could feel the finality of it settling in. I didn’t need to have omnias blood in my veins to feel fate crushing down on me.

“Thank you,” I whispered.

“I wanted to protect you,” he said. “From me, from what I might become, and from everything that came along with that.”

“And now?”

His gaze fell to my lips. “Now I just want you.”

A smile. A sigh. I had a gun to my head, but I was ridiculously happy in that instant. “I’m yours.”

His hand came up, like he meant to touch me. I dug the blade harder against his throat, leaving a small gash. Blood welled in the wound and spilled from it like melted wax over the edge of a candle.

The blood ran toward my hand, the one still clutching the knife. “I have an idea,” I said, inching my palm up the hilt, toward the blade. I forced myself not to move any other part of my body except my fingers and prayed I wouldn’t accidentally drop the weapon before I’d gotten what I needed.

When I felt the bite of the knife’s edge, I smiled. Crowe’s blood was streaming down the side of his neck, and mine was dripping from the pads of my fingers. I tried angling my hand a fraction of an inch to bring our essences together. Crowe’s finger slid back to the trigger.

“What are you doing?” he said.

“Saving us.”

“I can feel you moving. So you should either hurry up or stop it.”

I counted down in my head. Trying to propel myself into action, coiling the necessary energy I’d need to move fast enough to dodge a bullet.

One.

Two.

“Jemmie,” Crowe warned.

Three.

I pressed my right hand to the wound on Crowe’s neck where locant blood met venemon blood for the second time. As the power surged inside me, I threw my left hand up, grabbed Crowe’s arm and pushed it away. The gun went off inches from my face.

My ears ringing from the blast, I reached for the magic we’d just created together. It exploded out around us, gold and sapphire and the indefinable shimmer that was both of them together.