The Shadows (Black Dagger Brotherhood, #13)(152)

It was the right thing for her to do.

“Maybe you should just go,” he said in a dull voice.

“What?”

He brushed at his eyes. “Just leave. Just get out of here.” He nodded at the door. “I was prepared to go through absolutely anything with you, but not this. You don’t want my love, that’s fine. I get it. This has been a crazy couple of nights for you, and high emotion has a way of contaminating everything and making things seem more important than they really are. But you can’t be here with me anymore.”

She shook her head, like maybe that would help make his words make sense. “What are you talking about.”

“I don’t blame you. Doc Jane told you I saved your life, so there’s a lot of gratitude you must be feeling—that can be confused for love. I get it—”

“Wait, what—I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

“But I can’t be around you. You say you don’t want me to destroy myself? Fine, then a good place to start is with you leaving now.”

A weird flickering panic made her nape tighten up. “Trez, you haven’t listened to what I’ve been saying. You’re taking this in a completely different direction—a wrong one. I love you—”

“Don’t say that,” he snapped at her. “Don’t you say that to me—”

“I’ll say anything I like,” she snapped back. “It’s your hearing that I’d be worried about if I were you.”

“Oh, my ears are working fine, sweetheart. I just had the female I love and worship more than anything in the entire world tell me she wants me to go out and f*ck someone else. Maybe before you die, you should write Hallmark and suggest that shit for a Valentine’s Day card, it’s really f*cking romantic.”

Now she was the one springing to her feet. “I don’t want that! I don’t want any of this!” Her voice rose to a hysterical level, but she couldn’t help it. “Do you think I’m happy about saying these things, thinking these things! I have God only knows how many nights left and I’ve wasted this one sitting on that f*cking chair right there staring at some bullshit book I haven’t been reading, imagining you hanging yourself in a bathroom after I die! Or getting drunk and running your car into a tree! Or going on another f*cking spree that lasts not a decade but a century!”

She circled a finger next to her head. “These thoughts—I don’t want them! You think I want to tell you this? Jesus Christ, Trez, I love you! I don’t want you to ever be with another female, like ever! I want you to sit in a corner and mourn me until you die—I don’t want you to see the sun or the moon, or enjoy another meal, or have a good day’s sleep! I want to haunt you for the rest of your life, until everywhere you go and anyone you talk to, all you can see is the ghost of me—because then I know you won’t forget me!”

He put his hands out. “Selena, I—”

“You want to know what death is! I’ll tell you what it is—death is the living forgetting you! What you smell like and look like, what your voice sounds like, how you laugh! Even if there is an afterlife, my death is going to be you going on without me until you can’t remember what color my eyes are or how long my hair is—”

It turned out she was the one who went Luchas.

Suddenly, her vision went all white and she had no control over the way she lunged for the nearest lamp, yanked it off its side table, and hurled it across the room at the bank of windows, throwing the thing so hard its silk shade went flying and hit the chandelier hanging in the middle of the ceiling.

Cue the shattering. Everything broke, glass splintering into shimmers that went everywhere, such that Trez had to lift his arm to protect his eyes.

She burst into tears. “I don’t want you to go on without me.”

As her soul split in half, he jumped up and came over. When he tried to hug her, she flailed at him, beat him with her fists.

“You’re going to find someone else,” she moaned. “You’re going to fall in love with someone else and she’s going to be able to give you young and hold you when you have daymares and make you dinner.” The tears came so hard and heavy, she couldn’t take a breath. “And she’s going to be better than me because she’s going to…” Selena collapsed against him. “…she’s going to be lucky enough to be alive.”

Trez held her to his heart and stroked her back.

There it was. The truth was out. The evil she had been trying to package and pretty-bow up revealed because she had wanted to be a female of worth instead of the pathetic, clingy curse she actually was.

And yet, he was still with her. Standing soul-to-soul, flesh-to-flesh, undaunted, utterly determined to love her through it all.

Eventually, she became aware of the beat of his heart.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

So steady and strong.

Taking a shuddering breath, she eased back. As he brushed under her eyes with his thumbs, she said hoarsely, “Wow, that went well, huh?”





SIXTY


As Selena spoke up, Trez broke out a laugh. And she smiled.

They were both total hot messes, her face swollen and beet red from the screaming and the crying, his forearm bleeding from the glass that had hit him, their bodies shaky as they stood together.