Descent - Tara Fuller Page 0,45

I wanted this…with him. I couldn’t imagine going back to a world that didn’t include him. My heart thudded happily in my chest, hurting in a way I thought I might crave forever. Hurting in a way that told me that even after I shed this skin, my soul would never be the same, that this desire would always be a part of me.

His brows pulled together. He touched my face, catching one of my tears on his fingertip. “I hurt you?”

I shook my head, grabbing for his wrist to keep him with me. “You don’t understand—”

He pushed me off his lap and jumped off the bed as if I’d burned him. “You let me hurt you? What the hell is wrong with you, Gwen?”

He paced across the room, tugging at his hair.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. “Don’t you feel better?”

He looked at me like I was crazy, stopping several feet away from me. “Better? Of course I feel better, Gwen. But…you took it. Why would you do that for me? Why?”

I swallowed the fear clogging my throat, and the words spilled out of me before I could stop them. I didn’t want to stop them. How could I when they were the truth?

“Because I love you.”

Easton paled and his hands dropped to his sides. He took a step back, and his throat worked as he swallowed. “Don’t say that.”

“Why?”

“You don’t know me, Gwen,” he said. “If you did…”

“I do know you.” I scrambled to my knees, feeling that everything that had built between us was crumbling before my eyes. I wanted to stop him from tearing it down, to force him to let me love him. To let someone love him. “I know there is more to you than you let people see. That beneath those shifting bones and temporary skin there is goodness and light and a boy worthy of so much more than he’s been given. Easton—”

“Stop!” He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. Hair fell across his face as he jerked his belt around his waist. “Just…stop, Gwen. Stop trying to fix me. When are you going to get it? I can’t be fixed.”

He grabbed his blade and strapped it to his belt, avoiding my eyes. An ache bloomed in the center of my chest. It wasn’t his this time. This pain was all mine, awful and unfamiliar. He shoved the dresser out from in front of the door while I watched him silently. I didn’t know what else to say. He didn’t want to be loved. He didn’t want to love me.

He stopped, hand braced on the doorframe, but wouldn’t look at me. “This can’t happen again, Gwen. It won’t happen again.”

He shoved out the door and slammed it shut behind him. The broken mirror rattled, and a piece of glass fell to the floor, shattering on impact.

Chapter 16

Easton

In a world full of temptation, Gwen was the only thing I’d ever been unable to resist, and I was going to burn for my weakness. Not that I hadn’t burned before, but this time would be so much worse. This time it would be an eternity of burning. Burning while knowing someone like Gwen was out there on the other side, forever out of my reach. I shut the door behind me and leaned against the sizzling metal. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. She should’ve been easy to walk away from. I squeezed my eyes shut and slammed the back of my head against the door.

I just needed some distance. Away from her words. Away from the look in her eyes, loving me, pleading with me to love her back. She had no idea what she was asking. If she did, she wouldn’t have that doe-eyed, hopeful look on her face. If she knew what loving someone like me really meant, she would have been terrified. She should have been terrified. Just look at what one kiss from me had done.

I took off down the hall and slid my hand over my blade. One quick slit and blood slicked the palm of my hand. It didn’t work. My palm burned and throbbed with true, everyday pain, but the numbness never came. I was starting to think it didn’t exist anymore. Not with Gwen all over me. Her scent, her smile, her touch. Walk away? I almost laughed. I could run for an eternity and I’d never be able to escape the fire she’d started within me.

I hurtled down the stairs, toward the hell