God of Pain (Legacy of Gods #2)(126)

But I don’t stop running, battling the wind, and scanning every nook and cranny.

I’m about to swim into the deadly waves in search of her when I see her.

Annika stands at the top of the rocky shore, arms spread wide and head thrown back. The rain has soaked her black dress, a color she’s been wearing the past two days, and has glued it to her petite frame that’s being swayed by the wind.

I storm in her direction, pumped by the worst-case scenarios that play in my head. For a second, as she sways violently, I think the wind will steal her away before I reach her.

That she will fall and drown, and I’ll lose her for good.

You’ve already lost her. You just refuse to admit it, a bloody bastard who lives in my brain says, but I shut him out with plans to murder him later.

The moment I’m about two meters behind her, she turns around abruptly.

Streaks of her hair stick to her pasty pale neck, her cheeks are colorless, her lips are nude, and her eyes are so dim, I’d kill someone if it meant splashing color into them.

Including myself.

The rain soaks her, coming down so hard that she’s almost blurry.

“What are you doing here?” I take a step forward and she takes a step back.

Toward the fucking edge.

I do it again and she does the same, her eyes never leaving mine.

“What the fuck are you doing?” I strain, the words nearly ripping my vocal cords on their way out.

She says nothing, and I have to inhale and exhale a few times to keep from reaching out and choking the fuck out of her.

“Whatever it is you’re upset about, we can talk about it.” I soften my voice—as much as I’m able to soften it under the circumstances. “Just come here, little purple.”

Her lips tremble and a flash of light rises in the depths of her eyes before it’s pushed right down.

She shakes her head.

“I swear to fuck, Annika—” I cut myself off and release a long breath, summoning patience I don’t feel. “What do you want?”

“I want to go home,” she says easily, assertively. The first sentence she’s spoken in days is dedicated to her fucking parents.

“Anything but that.”

She takes another step back. This time, her eyes are so lifeless, she looks like she’s in a casket.

“Annika, stop!”

“You stop!” she yells back. “I’m tired. I’m so fucking tired of this, of you. You’re not the Creighton I know. You’re not the Creighton who made me feel safe and loved, you’re not the Creighton who gave me the courage to go after what I loved. Creighton would never hurt me like this, he wouldn’t rip my heart open over and over again no matter how much I beg him to stop. It’s like I’m stuck with an imposter and I hate it. I hate it so much.”

I grind my back teeth together and my jaw clenches so hard that I’m surprised no tendons are snapped.

“Is that why you refuse to talk to me or let me touch you? Because you think I’m an imposter?”

She nods.

I can hear the shattering sound of my world splintering to pieces. Pieces so small, I will never be able to find them, let alone mend them together again.

When I first brought Annika to this island, I thought we’d find what we once had. Yes, she fought me a little, but she also laughed and fooled around. She danced for me, flirted, and sighed contently in my arms. She loved laying her head on my lap and looking at my face when I read for her and then demanded more.

It felt as if she still loved me.

When she apologized for shooting me, I believed her.

I believed that she had to make a choice, but the bitter truth is that she’ll never choose me over her family.

It’s probably unfair for me to make her do that, but I wanted her to pick me like she picked her brother that time.

I wanted it to be me.

I just never thought that my fixation and my plan to bring us close would push us further apart. I never thought I’d rob her of light and leave her as this broken person.

She looks nothing like my Annika.

There’s no trace of her cheerfulness, the constant mischievousness and innocence in her eyes, or the energy that bubbles from her pores.

She might have physically shot me, but I killed her.

And there’s only one way to bring her back to life.

Even if it means sacrificing my own in return.

“Okay,” I whisper.

Her brows crease. “Okay?”

“I’ll take you home.”

“You…you will?”

“Have I ever lied to you?”

She shakes her head frantically, some of the light seeping back to her eyes. Slowly but steadily.

Fuck.

The knowledge that I nearly broke her spirit makes me want to shoot myself and, this time, never wake up.

That would be better than hearing the sound of my crumbling insides or witnessing her live without me.

It’d fucking rip me apart.

“Now, come down from the edge.” I offer her my hand, but she stares at it suspiciously.

We remain like that for a moment, her gaze sliding from my face to my hand and back again.

“Annika.”

“Yeah?”

“It’s raining.”

“I know.”

“Dance with me.”