and Lucas moves from his armchair to stand directly in front of me. At first, I’m confused about what he’s doing, but then he reaches down and plucks me from my spot between Cassian and Karsyn. He moves us both back to the armchair, placing me on his lap and wrapping his arms around me. He leans forward to rub his nose up and down my neck.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, his hands tightening around my waist.
I don’t know what, exactly, he’s apologizing for. Me getting kidnapped. Me getting almost murdered. What Emmett did to me. Gabriel’s death. Or the old scars still marring the skin on both of my wrists. Maybe it’s all of the above. Maybe he doesn’t quite know what he’s apologizing for, either.
“I didn’t really know Gabriel that well. I cared about him and considered him family, but I didn’t know him,” I confess in a whisper. My eyes flicker to the other three Devils, taking comfort in the steady rise and fall of their chests. They look exhausted. I swear a nuclear blast could go off in this room, and they’d sleep right through it. “I mean, I knew him, of course, but we weren’t close. He was kind of an asshole.” My lips twitch in a small smile when I think about the surly triplet. But that smile fades when I think about his unseeing eyes…
“Hey.” Lucas gently shakes me. “Don’t allow your mind to wander like that.”
“He sacrificed himself for me.” I twist my face so I can cry into his neck. “How can I live with that?”
“You can’t,” Lucas answers bluntly. When I jerk my head back in shock, he sighs, brushing at my cheeks with the pad of his thumbs. He stares at me with an expression I’ve never seen on his face before. Tenderness. Wonder. Love. “Some days, it’s going to suck. Some days, you’re going to want to fall apart. But you want to know what?”
“What?” I whisper.
“I’m not going to fucking let you,” he growls fiercely. “I didn’t know Gabriel at all, but he’s now one of my favorite people in this entire goddamn world. You want to know why?” He tenderly brushes at my hair, placing the sweaty strands behind my ears. “Because he brought you back to me.”
A myriad of emotions settles in my heart as I stare at this stunning man with the soulful blue eyes. How did I ever think them to be cold before? They’re hotter than an inferno, melting at the remaining ice surrounding my heart and setting me free.
I bring both of my hands up to cup his face as he’s doing to mine.
“How long was I out?” I whisper as he pulls me even closer to him.
His eyes harden, but not with anger. With pain. “A few days,” he whispers dejectedly. “Your grandma and her boyfriends healed the majority of your injuries by sewing up the doll. At least, the ones you got from that fucker, Emmett.”
“But not the ones I did to myself,” I muse, dropping my hands to my lap to stare at the savage, ugly scars on both of my arms. They’ll remain with me until the day I die, of that I’m certain.
Lucas doesn’t answer with words. Instead, he brings my left wrist up to his mouth and plants a tender, albeit chaste, kiss on the thickest one. The one that I intended to end my life.
“No. Not these scars,” he whispers, and his blue eyes ensnare my own, holding me hostage. The air around us seems to crackle with electricity. And I know without a shadow of a doubt, that everything has changed between us. I’ve always been unsure about Lucas, even when I began to fall for the other three Devils, but right here, in his arms, I feel a sense of contentment and safety. Of belonging. The emotions crash into me like a wrecking ball, stealing my breath away.
It’s Lucas who breaks the moment, though, turning away from me to stare at the strains of moonlight entering through the window.
“You should talk to your grandma,” he states abruptly, patting my thigh gently and indicating for me to get down. His rejection feels like a slap to the face, but I work to quickly mask my emotions. “She’s outside.”
Any hurt feelings I might’ve had diminish at his words. “Outside? Now?”
It can’t be later than one, maybe two, in the morning.
As I begin to move towards the front door, Lucas’s voice stops me cold. “This conversation