The Unlikeable Demon Hunter (Nava Katz #1)(90)

“That sucks.” His arms came around me. He had very sexy arms.

“Not dancing was like cutting out a piece of my heart.” I met his eyes. “I know you feel the same way about singing.”

Resounding silence.

“You wanted to know about my heart tattoo?” He lifted his arm up to look it at.

Now it was my turn to adjust to the topic switch. “Who was she?”

He didn’t answer so I ran my heel up his leg.

Rohan flinched at the roughness of my heel. “What are you, part dragon?”

“Answer.”

“Contrary to your belief that I’m both the world’s biggest horn dog and a hopeless romantic whose heart was shattered, this?” He tapped the tattoo. “Has nothing to do with some girl I was in love with.”

No? Excellent. Wait, I didn’t actually care. “A guy?”

He shot me a wry look. “Not that either.” He lay his arm across me, studying the tattoo. “It’s a reminder. For my weaker moments when I crave the spotlight again.”

“Nothing wrong with the spotlight.” I placed his hand on my hair to play with it. His fingers toyed with my strands, massaging tiny circles against my scalp. The effect was almost hypnotic.

“I was young and stupid,” he said. “I thought I could put my soul out there with my lyrics and be loved. Turns out people are cruel. The more famous you are, the more the knives come out. Conversely, the more your sense of self gets inflated and you get cruel. I got cruel.” Rohan gave me a self-deprecating grin. “Imagine that.”

That explained his magic turning him into a giant human blade, a reminder to guard his emotional well-being and his lingering regret over the person he became once famous. It made me and my electric powers look positively cuddly.

“That’s not the full story though, is it?”

He cleared his throat. “I mentioned in the park that I’d fucked up?” His expression grew tight, but at my nod, he continued. “I had a cousin, Asha.”

My stomach twisted at his use of the past tense.

“A year older than me,” he said. “Asha was like my sister.” His face lit up at the memory of her. “Amazing, hilarious. She was worth a billion of me. And when she needed me most?” He practically spat the next words. “When I could have helped her the most as Rasha? My head was so up my own ass from my rock star trip that I was convinced I knew best. Fuck everyone who didn’t agree with me. I let her down.”

His silence after that statement was loaded.

“She died?”

Rohan laughed bitterly. “That’s the kind way of putting it. There wasn’t enough left of her to bury.” He echoed the words Kane had mistakenly said earlier to me about Ari. If Rohan had loved his cousin half as much as I loved my brother, his grief and guilt must have been immeasurable.

I eyed the heart tattoo. Still was. “That’s why you stopped singing, wasn’t it? As a punishment.”

“Criticism? From you?” He tensed.

“Hardly,” I said.

He relaxed a fraction, but I remained pensive. Bad enough that he’d tattooed this heart on his arm to be slashed–symbolically broken–time and time again, in penance. Destroying his dream on top of that was truly heartbreaking.

More than his agreement to the song, I wanted him to understand.

“My entire life, Ari was the bright shiny twin with a future and a destiny and I wasn’t. I had a dream, but it never qualified me for bright shiny status. Except then I was Rasha and he wasn’t and…”

“You felt guilty.”

“Beyond anything.”

I sat up, holding the sheet against my chest. “You know why I forgot I was Rasha? Not because I didn’t want it. Because I was starting to like it. Coming home that night when I first found Leo, I’d been thinking I had something to offer this gig. That maybe, for the first time since all my life plans had crashed and burned, I’d found something I could excel at again. Except I didn’t believe that I had any right to it. Any right to be bright and shiny. And the really fucked up thing? I never considered if maybe that label, that expectation, had weighed Ari down all these years, just as much as lack of expectation had me.”

I lost my fight with the tears, but before I could swipe at them, Rohan gently brushed his thumb along my skin to wipe them away.

“Despite what happened, Rohan? You’re denying an essential part of yourself. I’m not saying go all rock star again, but you can’t stop singing and making music. It’s who you are just as much as being Rasha.” I cupped his jaw. “Even if you don’t do this song, please think about what I’ve said. You don’t need to live with that deep-seated unhappiness. You don’t need to live with that guilt. You have the right to decide how you want to live. You have the right to be happy.”

Rohan didn’t say anything, just held my gaze. Every particle between us was charged with this intense intimacy and, in that moment, I almost broke my rule and kissed him.

Our mutual tensing hit at the same instant.

I dropped my hand. “What are we doing here?”

He sighed. “Fuck if I know.”

“Right.” I sat up and retrieved my nightgown, pulling it over my head. “Thanks for the sex stuff.”