at some point in time. Back and forth, back and forth, never ending. A continuous and toxic loop of blood-curdling hatred combined with toe-curling love and lust.
I don’t think I love the Devils. At least, not yet. But I can see myself irrevocably and irreversibly falling for them if I remain around them. They’re the suns that I desperately orbit around, chasing them despite the risk of getting burnt.
“Peony…don’t think like that,” Karsyn whispers as he tugs on my hands. I didn’t even realize that I was digging my nails into my palms, reverting to some of my nastier habits from five years ago. “Don’t listen to things a little shit like me said in middle school. I never meant any of it. What do you need me to do? How can I make you forgive me?”
“Karsyn, you’re not listening to me,” I huff, attempting to wrench my hands free. His grip remains firm. “You were right. You were always right. I’m not normal, and I don’t think I’ll ever be. A darkness resides inside of me. Don’t you see? So this…” With my hand still in his, I attempt to gesture between the two of us. “Can’t be a thing. Though I don’t even know what kind of ‘thing’ we would be.”
“Whatever we fucking want to be,” Karsyn replies adamantly, lips pursed.
He doesn’t understand, and short of me screaming that I’m a witch, I don’t know how else to drill it into his stubborn head.
“I wanted to hurt you,” I blurt out. “I mean, I want to hurt you. I came to this town for one reason—revenge. I wanted you and the others to pay for what you did to me.” My words rush together, a strange combination of past and present tenses, but honestly? I don’t know which one is true. Revenge is the last thing on my mind at the moment. Do I still hate him? Hate them? Do I still want to destroy their lives the way they did mine? The way I thought they did mine? Are they as cruel and capricious as I thought them to be?
He blinks at me, seemingly unable to comprehend my words. Those gorgeous, curled lashes of his appear even darker and thicker in the rain. His hands drop from mine as if I burned him, as if some sticky, toxic substance coats my skin instead of rain water.
It’s better this way. It’s better if he hates me.
Because that means I’m still allowed to hate him.
“I sabotaged you at the football game,” I confess, watching as his eyebrows draw together in confusion.
“That’s not possib—”
“I’m not a good girl, and you’re not a good guy.” My pain refuses to relent, like a splinter embedded beneath my fingernail. “So now you see.” All I can hear is the pounding of my heart, each heartbeat threatening to be my last.
Almost mechanically, he repeats, “Now I see.”
“You just need to let me go,” I continue, staring at the broken man who stole my heart and then crushed it in his fist. And I think that’s another problem. It’s not just him who has a piece of my heart.
“I just need to let you go,” he parrots dumbly.
This time when I walk away, he doesn’t follow me.
Chapter 39
I don’t make it far before I fall apart. My knees hit the sidewalk as I collapse just a few blocks away from my house. The rain slows, now nothing more than light sprinkles that caress my face, and the sun begins to crest the gray, pregnant storm clouds.
It’s almost as if the universe itself wants to remind me that this isn’t the end. That this isn’t over. That the sun always comes out…
Okay. Even I know that’s complete and utter shit.
My phone rings in my back pocket, and I awkwardly reach for it. Fortunately, I’m in an area of town most people don’t travel to, where nothing but country houses, acres of trees, and the occasional corn field ornamented with silos reside. I imagine they would grow quite concerned at the sight of a crying, disheveled girl kneeling in a puddle of mucky rain water.
“Yeah?” I answer hoarsely.
“Peony?” It’s Nana, her tone even more frazzled than it had been the first time I called her about the Bloods. “Are you okay? Why aren’t you home?”
“I told you.” I bite my nails into my palms, reveling in the slight bite of pain. “I was with a friend.”
“It’s not safe,” she snaps. And then, in a softer voice, she