Eternal (Shadow Falls: After Dark #2)(32)

I didn’t do anything wrong. I’m not guilty. But freaking hell if she didn’t feel as if she’d been dipped, rolled, and deep-fried in the ugly emotion.

“I won’t keep you long,” he said, the somber sound of his tone echoing in Della’s head.

“Sure.” She picked up her phone so she wouldn’t miss Burnett’s call—a call that would once again put her with Chase.

Two choices, her mind chanted. Let Steve go or refuse to work with Chase.

She stood up, knowing what she had to do. Dread and nerve-splitting pain spilled out of her heart, into her chest, flowed into her limbs, and traveled all the way up to her scalp and down to her feet. Even her pinkie toe hurt.

She was five-foot-three of nothing but raw pain. But the only thing that would hurt worse than losing Steve was knowing she was hurting him.

Decision made. Ready to crash and burn, she started toward Steve.

*   *   *

Steve led the way through the woods. He seemed to know where he was going. She didn’t even note his direction, she just followed, her heart and mind on what she had to do.

He never spoke; neither did she. Their footsteps seemed to be swallowed by the trees, as if they breathed in sound and not air.

He stopped at a spot right next to the swimming hole, abandoned by most of the campers due to the fall cold. The vampires, more resistant to the temperature than the others, still came here, but not nearly as much. It just seemed much more fun when all the campers participated.

Today, however, there were no sounds of laughter or splashing, the water lying so still, it became a mirror to the fall-dressed trees. Yellow and orange and an occasional patch of red leaves reflected on the quiet stillness of the lake. Della tried to pull some calm from the vision that some saw as beautiful. She failed. Fall meant death to the leaves, and Della sensed some part of her would die here today as well.

The sound of Steve’s breathing had Della looking away from the water and to him.

His brown eyes reflected regret, sorrow, pain. And was that guilt?

“I can’t do this anymore.” They had spoken in unison, and the same words.

She saw the surprise on Steve’s face that she knew she wore on hers. Her throat tightened.

“I didn’t do anything wrong.” She wasn’t sure why she had to say it, but it felt important. Steve didn’t deserve to feel betrayed. And maybe she didn’t want to be thought of as a betrayer, either.

He took a step closer. So close, he could touch her if he chose to. He didn’t choose to. And that almost brought her to tears. “Nothing’s happened between—”

“I know.” He stuffed his hands into his pockets. He shuffled his feet and stared down at the ground, but not before she saw that hint of what looked like guilt again. An ugly thought hit … had Steve betrayed her? Had he and Jessie hooked up? Had she been wrong to trust him?

“You?” she asked, and she didn’t have to say more. When he looked up, she knew he understood her question.

“No. God, no.” There was honesty in his tone and she believed him.

He exhaled and ran a hand over his face. “You were dying, Della,” he stated as if he had a speech planned but forgot the beginning. “That day, when Chase called me … he told me that you two would be bonded. I’d never heard of anything like that, but I also knew it didn’t matter. If saving you meant losing you, I’d do it. But now…”

His eyes grew darker, and Della’s grew moist. “You haven’t lost me,” she said. Suddenly wanting to take it all back. She couldn’t lose him.

“Not completely, but…”

When he didn’t continue, she said, “You told me you wouldn’t let the bond thing change things,” she reminded him, even though she knew letting go was right—even when she accepted this had to happen—but for some reason it still felt wrong.

“I know, and I thought I could do it. But when I think about you and him—”

“I haven’t done anything. We haven’t—”

He pulled a hand out of his pocket and pressed a finger over her lips. “I know.” His warm touch brought more tears to her eyes and she felt a few slip from her lashes onto her cheek. “What we have”—he waved a hand between them—“it’s real and I want it more than you know. But there’s something—something between you and Chase, too. I saw it in the way you two looked at each other today.”

He’d seen it? Seen it today? “What…? How…?”

“When Burnett called and you didn’t show up, I went to Chase’s cabin. I’d followed him there a while back.”

Della remembered the bird, the one Chase had pointed out to her, and now she knew it had been Steve. “You have so little faith in me that…”

“It isn’t you I don’t trust. It’s Chase. It’s this whole bond thing. I’ve waited for weeks for you to assure me that it isn’t real, that it means nothing, but you never have.”

He swiped a hand over his forehead. “Not that I can blame you for that, either. You didn’t want to lie to me, and when I saw the way you two looked at each other, I knew I couldn’t do this anymore.”

She felt the need to say something, but what? So she didn’t speak, she just stood there and listened as he told her good-bye.