I…” She closed her eyes and more tears rushed down her cheeks.
I felt frantic, hating that I didn’t know what to do or how to heal this pain in her. I couldn’t bring Chase back from the dead, and it looked like that was the only thing that could mend this ache.
“I’m sorry, beautiful,” I said heavily. “I shouldn’t have let him go off alone the night The Dollhouse came down.”
“Why were you there with him?” she asked, looking at me once more and I realised we’d never had this conversation.
I swallowed thickly, not wanting to go there, to let this wound split apart. I didn’t want to bleed. But Rogue needed me to. I could see how alone she was and I needed to climb down into this pit of despair with her and just let her know I was breaking too. But if she saw that, she’d question everything, I’d fucking question everything.
“We caught a Dead Dog,” I grunted. “He told us Shawn’s plans for The Dollhouse, so we went there together. I don’t think he cared if he died that night, he would have given anything to get you and the others out.”
“He kissed me,” she admitted. “Before he died. I went to see him and we argued and…fuck, if I’d just gone with him or fought harder to make Fox bring him home maybe he wouldn’t be dead.”
The weight of that news washed over me and I scored my thumb along her chin as I realised something that she’d been trying to tell me all along. “You never were gonna choose, were you?”
She shook her head. “It’s the five of us or nothing. That’s how it always was. And I guess things haven’t changed. Because it can’t be the five of us anymore, Rick, so it’s nothing.” She said it in a way that told me she felt that nothingness down to her core and I dropped my forehead to hers, despising that, wanting to fill that void but knowing I wasn’t enough to do it.
She was right. I’d felt the absence of my brothers like bloody chunks had been carved out of my heart, but I’d been willing to bear that pain in the pursuit of revenge against them too. I was broken a long time ago, a boy hammered and beaten into a shattered illusion of a man. But that had never mattered before because I’d known destroying them would destroy me in turn. I’d been willing to go down with the ship, but now Rogue was involved and she was on this ship too and the water was already coming in.
“Tell me what I can do,” I begged. “Tell me there’s a way to mend that hurt in you and I’ll do it. Whatever it is, baby girl.”
I released her throat, dragging my thumb along her collar bone and hooking her necklace into my grasp before running it down to the key. “Is it this? You want the rest of these keys, you want vengeance?”
“I don’t know anymore,” she breathed, her tears drying up and a horrible numbness filling her gaze instead as she leaned against the door. She looked like she didn’t care anymore, and that was the worst thing I’d ever faced. Because Rogue Easton was full to the brim with life, she cared about everything and nothing and brought the sunshine with her wherever she went. But this girl’s light was going out and there wasn’t enough fire left in me to rekindle her flame.
I went to move away, hating that I was failing her and she caught my collar in her grasp, tugging me toward her. Her lips met mine and she spoke between kisses as my heart thrashed with need for this girl. “If the sun rises tomorrow, we’ll watch it together,” she said breathily. “And if it doesn’t, we’ll fall into the dark hand in hand, Maverick Stone. So don’t you dare run away from me.”
I pushed my tongue into her mouth, pinning her to the crypt and placing my forearm above her head as I kissed her slow and hard, trying to tell her all the words that had abandoned me.
I would be there so long as she needed me, and I’d break with her if that was her fate. But I suddenly feared the path we were walking on, because once we’d cracked this crypt open and let our secrets out into the light, her words were going to come true.
But if Fox and Johnny