she is. How innocent. How she didn’t deserve any of this.
I push hair from her temple, but when I try to wipe the ash from her face, I smear blood along her cheek instead. I kiss her forehead, her cheeks, her mouth. I think about how Lucas was right in his prediction. I break everything I touch. And she’s broken beyond repair.
“I love you,” I whisper in her ear. Apart from Annabel and my mother, I’d never said those words to anyone before Cristina. “And I’m sorry.”
A sadness like I’ve never felt twists inside my chest.
I wonder why people say they loved someone in the past tense when that person dies. Do they stop loving them then? Is that what happens? How conditional their love.
“I love you.” Present tense. “Do you hear me? Do you fucking hear me!” I shake her. Hurting her still. Even now.
Blood on my hands again. Always blood with me.
When I loosen the rope from around her neck, I notice how it cut into her skin. I pull it over her head, but before I can lean down to kiss her lips again, before I can whisper again that I love her, her body jerks violently. Her eyes fly open as she gasps for breath, hands to her neck, desperate for air.
She opens her mouth and I think she would scream if she could, but she can’t get enough air in.
Another choked sound. Me this time.
She clutches at me, hands falling away, grasping at nothing. I lift her to sit as she wheezes not believing my eyes. Not believing this miracle.
She’s alive.
Cristina is alive.
Her hand closes around my forearm and pain makes me hiss.
I look down at it, beneath her hand is the raw, red skin burned anew. Freshly charred flesh. The smell is mixed in with all the rest of them.
But even through the pain all I can do is look at her and hold her to me. And I remember what I promised her just now. What I said I’d do if she’d only breathe. If she’d just open her eyes and take one more breath.
30
Cristina
“Just open your eyes and I’ll let you go.”
I do as he says and open my eyes to see Damian standing over my bed. I blink, sitting up.
“Hey,” I say, touching my hair to smooth it, wondering what I look like in my hospital gown while he’s standing there in a dark suit looking as impeccable as ever. Apart from a bruise on the side of his jaw, stitched cuts on his face, and the bandage around his hand and arm, he looks the same.
There are more bandages underneath the clothes, though. And he’s not quite the same. There’s a little more gray in the five o’clock shadow and along his temples. And as put together as he is I know the exterior masks the depth of the loss he’s feeling.
He killed his brother. His twin brother. Even if Lucas was crazy, even if Damian had no choice, he still pushed the knife into his brother’s belly and felt the blood spill from him.
And this is a man who has kept his emotions hidden for years. For all his life, probably. A man used to being on his own. Alone. Always alone.
The thought is unsettling. I don’t like it.
It’s been six days since the night our world collapsed around us. Crashed down onto us in a fire built of rage and fury and despair and too much hate.
“Hey.” He doesn’t smile. I see how his gaze darkens as it moves from the bandage on my arm to where they removed the tracker and finally to my neck. I know it’s bruised. I’ve seen it. Can feel how tender it is.
“Are they releasing you?” I ask, surprised. I thought I’d be out earlier than him.
“I’ve released myself.” The emotion I just saw is gone, masked. Shuttered. Shutting me out.
“What?”
“I have to take care of some things. How are you feeling?”
I shrug a shoulder, something heavy settling in the pit of my stomach. “I’m okay. Sit down.”
“I can’t stay.”
A lump forms in my throat. Swallowing it is harder than I imagine it should be. “What do you mean you can’t stay?”
I stare up at his closed-off eyes. They give nothing away.
He sets a large envelope on the table beside the bed.
“What’s that?”
“My promise.”
I look from the envelope to him. “What do you mean?”
“I’m sorry for what he did to you. For what happened to you because of me.”