“Yeah. A broken arm might now. Could have been a fuck of a lot worse.”
I gave him a look. “But it wasn’t.”
He turned from the sink, his face a mask. “But it fucking could have been. Because of that club. Because of the shit tangled up with it.”
I put my hands on my hips. Well one hand. The cast kind of fucked with the pissed-off-woman stance. “That wasn’t the club’s fault. They would never put anyone in danger on purpose. Not Bex, not Rosie. Not me. Those men would die first. They almost have. Many times.”
Keltan’s eyes glittered, mind working over something as he stared at me.
“Yeah, and so have you, Bex, Gwen, Amy, Lily, Mia,” he listed. “It did kill a woman, Snow,” he murmured. “And a man. Part of him, anyway. Don’t know the fucker well, and I know he’s found it now, but when I first saw him, I saw it. That yawning chasm that was ripped out of him when he lost her. His woman. It’s filled now, but I don’t doubt that poor bastard has battled through the nine levels and then some to get where he is.” His breathing turned rough. “That ain’t gonna be me. I’m not letting you have the same fate as—”
“Stop!” I screeched, my voice rough even to my ears. “You don’t get to say her name because you don’t know her. You don’t know anything about her death or her life. And you don’t know that she was a light that only shone so bright because she had her other half. I know for a fact that if she knew her fate the moment she laid eyes on Bull, she wouldn’t have done anything differently. As much as I wish and pray my friend would’ve, if time machines or magicians were ever real. I know it. Because she was a princess. Not the ones in the books, but the kind who believed in that nonsense. She lived for it. Breathed for it. And she found it. In this ugly world where not enough fairy tales are even begun, she found it. Her end was as ugly as anyone could conjure up.”
I paused, flinching at the memory of that horrible day the sun didn’t shine quite as bright. Still did. “But I still know, as much as it kills me, that there was no other option for her.” I eyed him. “Don’t you dare talk about my dead friend like you know what path she could have taken. Because you don’t. That would be like me telling you that the army is evil and wrong because of the amount of lives it takes. Because it killed your best friend and left Gwen with her own gaping hole. Telling you that would be fucking cruel,” I hissed.
He gave me an even look. “Might be cruel, but it’s the truth. And I got out. Because I couldn’t live with the fact that the path I’d chosen cost my best fuckin’ friend his life. Because he followed me to enlist because that’s what he did. We were brothers, and he told me no way in hell would I be doing something like that without him watching my back.” He paused, breathing heavily. “And he did watch my back. And that’s what killed him. My choices. No way in any kind of hell, in this world or the next, will I have a decision like that on my conscience.”
My heart hurt for him. For the blame he put so wrongly on his shoulders. Despite my rage at his earlier words, I couldn’t stand to see the guilt in those irises. “Ian wasn’t your fault,” I whispered. “We don’t have control over the universe. Over who it tries to take away from us.”
My words washed over him and brought his hands to my hips, yanking me to his body. “Yeah, but I’ve got control over who I have in my hands. Who I’ll always have in my life until the universe takes me to whatever waits for me in the next.” His hand moved to cup my jaw lightly. “But I can’t have that, what I hold in my hands, being somewhere that her life is filled with car bombs and kidnapping and drive-by shootings. I won’t survive that shit.”
His words, the way they wove around the promises and tender declarations and other statements, worked both with chaos and stillness. I stared at him a bit, letting the stillness take over.
Then I purposefully stepped out of his arms.
“Don’t give me ultimatums, Keltan,” I warned. “I don’t do well backed into a corner.”
He narrowed his eyes, stepping forward so he both figuratively and literally had me in a corner. “You know what I don’t do well with?” he asked quietly, fury an undertone beneath the stillness of his words. “Snatching you out of the air as a bomb explodes behind you!” he roared. “I left the fuckin’ warzone that cost me my best friend, my brother. I’m not walkin’ into another one that has me losin’ you. No fucking way,” he gritted out.