“Then how could you have known what would happen?” he asked, and the question sounded reasonable, but she knew it didn’t matter.
She shook her head in confusion again before laying it against the rough stone wall beside her head. Mark had no doubt come to try to save her as soon as the Coyote had managed to get hold of him.
He’d have come straight to the desert, knowing he was going to die. He would have known he couldn’t save her, or himself.
He should have just saved himself.
“Is Khileen okay?” she asked the Breed who still watched her thoughtfully. “She was so scared. She got away, though. When that Coyote pulled me out of the car, she was trying to get it back into gear after they forced us to stop. She’s not used to a manual shift yet.”
Her friend had managed to save herself, but she hadn’t been able to do so before the Coyote had forced Gypsy out of the little sports car her friend had picked her up in.
She didn’t blame Khileen.
She was thankful her friend had gotten away. It was bad enough that Gypsy had gotten her own brother killed. If she had gotten Lobo Reever’s stepdaughter killed, then Jessica Reever, her mother’s best friend, would never have forgiven her mother.
Her mom would need her friend when she realized what Gypsy had done.
“Khi’s fine,” he promised her. “If it hadn’t been for her, we would have never known where to find you. We were at her stepfather’s ranch trying to find your brother when she made the call to him.”
Gypsy remembered her friend had said that her mother and stepfather had some kind of Breed company. A delegation from the Breed community or something.
Oh God, what was she going to do? Her parents were coming, and they didn’t like putting up with her anyway. How many times had her mother laughingly told Mark how easy it would be to just get a babysitter when she was little? Or how easily she could just stay by herself after she turned thirteen?
They had wanted Mark to do stuff with them. Things that they said Gypsy wouldn’t adapt well to. How could her sister adapt but Gypsy couldn’t, she’d wondered.
This was why, she reminded herself cruelly. Because she was stupid and she did bad things.
How was she going to tell her parents what she had done this time? How was she ever going to explain to Kandy how selfish she had been?
That she’d sneaked out to go to a party when Mark was in such danger?
Her parents were going to hate her.
Mark was their only son, and though they often said they loved all their children, it was Mark they were best friends with. He was the one they had so much pride in.
Because he was strong and smart and never lied or sneaked out of the house. But whenever Gypsy did, he was always there, watching her, protecting her.
He wouldn’t be there anymore.
All the security she had ever known in her life was gone now.
“I want to die.” She wanted to close her eyes and just go away. “I wish they had just killed me first.”
If they had killed her, then she wouldn’t have to face what she had done. And she wouldn’t have to live her life without Mark in it.
“Look at me, Gypsy.” The demand in his voice was impossible to deny, but she was so tired that turning her head to meet his gaze seemed to take forever.
The gentleness in his expression, the sympathy and regret that filled those silvery eyes, urged her to believe him, commanded her to obey him.
“You can’t die, Gypsy, you have a far too interesting future ahead of you,” he said, glancing to her side for the briefest second before focusing on her once again.
An interesting future? No, there was no interesting future. There would always be the memory of the horrible mistake she had made.
“I don’t want an interesting future,” she answered him mechanically, stepping eagerly into the strange, unemotional shell she could feel beginning to wrap around her. “I just want Mark to come back.”
Yes, she opened herself to that heavy weight, urged it to cover her quickly, to dim the agony resonating through her soul, just a little bit.
Jonas grimaced, rubbing at the side of his neck in a gesture of helplessness that she was certain was a completely alien feeling for someone so strong.