Slow Agony (Assassins, #2)(88)

When we were done, when we’d each found ecstatic release in the other’s body, when we’d fallen from the heights of outer space back down onto the floor my apartment, he didn’t move out of me. We stayed joined, both gasping, sweating, touching.

He entwined my fingers with his. “Doll, I don’t think that darkness was inside us.”

“What?” I didn’t know what he was talking about. I was still in the afterglow, and I couldn’t think what he meant.

“What we did to him. Marcel.”

I could feel myself shrinking from him.

He grasped my hands tightly, keeping me close. “No, listen to me. I think he put that darkness in us when he hurt us. I think when we killed him, we gave it back to him. I think we poured it out into him, and he took it. We buried it with him. And it’s gone.”

I could feel Griffin starting to soften inside me. I brought my thighs tighter around his hips, keeping us as connected as I could. “Do you really think so?”

“Yes.”

I kissed him hard.

*

I wish it was easy after that. I wish that we planned out our wedding, and that we started popping out babies left and right, and that we lived happily ever after, and that we rode into the sunset on a pale, white horse or some shit.

It wasn’t easy.

For one thing, I couldn’t stop all my little rituals. I wanted to cut myself. It made me feel at peace. When I cut myself, for several minutes, I had no guilt. It was a very scary thing to try to leave behind. Griffin wouldn’t let me out of his sight, yelling at me when I tried to take the knives when he wasn’t paying attention. He made me leave the door the bathroom open when I used it, which was a heretofore unprecedented level of intimacy between us. But he couldn’t trust me not to cut. And it took a long time before the urge went away.

Even after it did, I still lit candles three times a day for months on end. I had to scale it back, lessening the amount slowly until I could completely stop.

It had taken me only four months to get myself stuck in the rituals. It took twice as long to give them all up.

And Griffin woke up with nightmares almost every single night for the first few months we were back together. He’d be wild with terror, clinging to me in bed. He woke up screaming sometimes, and those screams were so hollow and horrible they tore out my insides.

They got better with time too, but it was a lot of time, and they never really went completely away. Sometimes, he’d go without one for months and then wake up with a particularly bad one.

When he had those nightmares, he couldn’t always go back to sleep afterwards. He and I would sit up together somewhere where the light was bright. He would shake. Sometimes he let me hold him. Other times, he would shriek at me if I tried to touch him.

It wasn’t easy.

But I think it was easier because we were together. I’m not saying that Griffin’s presence magically healed me or something. And I sure as hell know that I didn’t make him okay just by being around. I guess what I mean is that I worked harder to keep myself together because I knew he was depending on me. Like I was more important because he loved me.

I’m not sure if that makes me pathetic. I think it makes me human. When I was trying to fix myself so that I’d be able to help him, I just wallowed in my own fears. I didn’t make any progress. I slipped deeper and deeper away from reality. Griffin was like an anchor. I cared about him, and because I knew he needed me, I cared about me. Maybe that’s twisted. Maybe I should have found my own well of strength deep down someplace, like the women in those Oprah book club novels always do.

But that wasn’t Griffin and me. We were too damaged and screwed up for stuff like that. We made it together, and we were stronger together, and we depended on each other.

Maybe we found some time in there to plan a wedding too. Well, maybe I did.

Griffin himself didn’t seem particularly interested in the kinds of flowers we’d have in the bouquets or the colors of the bridesmaid dresses. I had to rely on Sloane and Beverly for insight.

The wedding was going to happen. Someday soon. Someday when we felt like we weren’t struggling just to scrape through the days.

And that was getter better.

Every day, it was.

And every night, I fell asleep next to him, our bodies twined together, his lips against my skin, murmuring that he loved me, that he needed me. Every night, I whispered it back.




Want freebies, information on new releases, discounts, and more? Visit my website to join my email list.

vjchambers.com

More fiction by V. J. Chambers on Amazon!




More New Adult from V. J. Chambers



Paranormal:

The Toil and Trouble Trilogy Zombies, the magic mafia, and a love triangle: Getting hot and heavy with Brice Ventresca is a drunken mistake, something that becomes very clear to Olivia Calabrese when the clock strikes midnight and he turns into a berserker--a rage-filled monster who tries to kill her.




Invoke Reese and Wyn, two psychic students at a special college, never intended to fall in love with each other. But an exercise in the spirit realm has gone wrong, and now malicious spirits have taken over their bodies, intent on recreating the doomed love of Guinevere and Lancelot.




Horror:

Brighter Post-college angst. Unrequited love. Body-snatching monsters.