And it was painful . . . so painful knowing I’d been sleeping with a man I didn’t know at all. That I’d fallen in love with a façade. And he’d allowed it.
“How many people have you killed?”
His eyes darkened, and his right hand once again moved to the large tattoo on his forearm while his head moved in the faintest of shakes. “Enough that I refuse to tell you.”
“One would be more than enough, but you said you would answer my questions,” I said tightly as I wrapped my arms around my waist, trying unsuccessfully to calm my churning stomach.
Nearly a minute passed without the devil responding, and I wondered if he was counting or avoiding answering when he suddenly said, “I remember every single person, and I’m haunted by their faces every day. I won’t haunt you with a number.”
I wanted to tell him that I might have preferred a number over the answer he’d given me—because his answer left a chill deep in my bones and my stomach rolling with unease as terrifying images and thoughts filled my mind.
I watched as he trailed his fingers over his arm and wondered about the other person who haunted him. “Do you still love her?”
His hand stopped, and his unnerved gaze met mine. “No, but I still care about her. I always will. Of anything, you have to understand that.”
I did.
Images of Kyle assaulted me. Flashes of a disastrous morning burned behind my eyelids.
A fleeting moment of bliss ruined by agonized cries and pleas and one weighted question . . .
“Do you still love him?”
“Yes.”
A devastating day filled with handwritten notes and misunderstanding. A night mended by the most beautiful connection—and the first time I’d told Lucas I loved him.
And now even that memory felt tainted.
My throat tightened as every emotion overwhelmed me and threatened to suffocate me. My vision blurred, and I hated how weak and pathetic I sounded when I asked, “Did you ever love me?”
Pain tore across his face, and I watched as he struggled to replace it with that infuriating, cold indifference. “If you have to ask, then you won’t hear my answer.”
He was right. It didn’t matter what he said then. I already felt so shattered. If he’d said he hadn’t loved me, my heart couldn’t break any more than it already had. If he told me that he had—that he did—I doubted I would believe him.
I had looked past the man the devil was supposed to be and had fallen in love with him. I had looked past his cruelties to his kindness and love and had thought I’d shown him he could have more than this life. I’d looked his darkness head-on and embraced it.
The darkness of the man before me was all new. Something he’d wrestled with but I hadn’t been prepared for. Something I hadn’t been forgiving and fighting against all these months. And despite how much I wanted to believe that the Lucas I had fallen in love with was really the man before me, I didn’t know how to. I wasn’t sure I could.
I couldn’t differentiate between the lies to find the truth.
“I need . . . I’m sorry, but I just need time,” I whispered, then staggered to standing.
Without seeing him or the kitchen that just an hour before had held our passion and our fabricated bliss, I walked blindly up the stairs and to my room, and had barely made it into the shower—clothes and all—before my sobs broke free.
Chapter 37
Day 119 with Briar
Lucas
Briar hadn’t come back downstairs that night, or the next, or the next . . . And despite my panic and my restlessness and my overwhelming need to beg her to understand, I hadn’t gone searching for her.
I’d told her I wouldn’t chase her.
I’d been so sure she would be gone as soon as she knew the truth, and even though she’d walked away from me, she was still inside the house and had only said she’d needed time.
I wanted to give her my life . . . time seemed like nothing in comparison.