Descent - Tara Fuller Page 0,53

my attention to Scout.

“Take her back,” I said. “Tell Balthazar I’ll report for punishment after I’ve gotten the kid and taken him back to where he belongs.”

Scout shook his head. “It’s not going to be just a punishment. Not this time. You brought his daughter this far in, Easton. What did you expect?”

“I know.”

“No!” Gwen grabbed my arm, and my eyes shut as a jolt of relief washed over me, quenching my thirst, healing me. “I’m not leaving. I won’t leave here without Tyler. And there is no way you are facing Father without me. He has to understand that I forced you into this. That it’s all my fault. If I had never interfered in the first place, kept Tyler in that café, none of us would be here.”

I opened my eyes and reached up to stroke the soft curve of her face. The memory was all I was going to get when this was done. I had a feeling it wouldn’t do the real Gwen justice.

“I could have said no, Red,” I said. “I could have walked away.”

She narrowed her gaze on me. “Then why didn’t you?”

“Because I wanted…” I raked my fingers through my hair, then linked them behind my neck, trying to find the words. Why hadn’t I walked away when I had the chance? Because deep down…I wanted her. I wanted her from the first moment I laid eyes on her.

“You wanted what?” she prodded.

I dropped my hands to my sides. “You. I think I’ve wanted you since the first time I saw you, out there on the street. You didn’t look at me like I was a monster. Like I was death. You looked at me like I was…more. How the hell was I not supposed to want you?”

I finally stopped the spill of words from my mouth. They weren’t things I ever would have admitted out loud under normal circumstances, but if this was the final good-bye, what did I have to lose? When I got back to Balthazar, there wouldn’t be a chance for any of this.

“You are more,” she whispered.

I pulled Gwen against me and pressed my lips to her hair. This girl who made me want so much. This girl who had managed to break through the wall I’d spent the last five hundred years constructing around my heart. I had to let her go. Keeping her would only prove how selfish I was.

“You’ve got to go, Red,” I said into her hair, feeling another section of the wall come down. Pain was quick to replace the numbness, rushing over the rubble, drowning me from the inside out. Scout looked at me like he’d never seen me before. I rolled my eyes and flipped him off behind Gwen’s back, trying to mask the feelings inside.

“No!” She pushed away from me, that look of misplaced determination back in her eyes. “You don’t get to tell me what to do. You don’t get to say things like that to me, then expect me to leave you down here all alone.”

I paced across the room, growling. “You don’t want to go where he is, Gwen! You don’t want to see that. I don’t want you to see that. You need to go back to your father. You need to go back to where you belong.”

“I…” Her eyes glistened. “I belong with you.”

I stopped and met her gaze, and a brand-new crack split off a piece of my heart. “As much as I wish that could be true, it’s not. You belong somewhere better than I’ll ever get to be. We both knew this was never going to work when this was over. You need to go home.”

“You don’t get to make that decision for me,” she said, folding her arms.

“Do you have any idea how irritating you are when you’re being this stubborn?”

“You said you liked it when I was stubborn,” she said. “You said I was brave and that I made you smile.”

I threw my hands up. “Then it was temporary insanity!”

Scout stepped between us.

“As much as I hate to interrupt this bizarre yet entertaining lover’s quarrel,” Scout started, “I can’t go back without you two. I’m already on thin ice with the big guy. What do you think he’s going to do to me if I show up empty-handed?”

I stalked to the window and braced my hands on the ash-coated sill, looking out the bleary glass at the streets of Hell. Below us a constant war raged with millions of souls