There is only nothing.
20
I’M UNDERWATER.
I must be. Someone is calling my name. It’s muffled. It’s the kind of speech that only happens when someone’s head is submerged in water. I don’t know why I’m underwater.
An intense heat swims around in my stomach. My eyes burn and shoot open. Charming hovers over me, cradling me in his arms. He’s covered in blood, and tears are running down his cheeks.
I open my mouth to ask what happened, but all that comes out is a groan of pain. Then my memory starts putting the pieces back together. The kitchen. Victoria. The knife.
Oh, gods, I’m dying.
“Kinsley,” Charming says in a broken voice. “Come on, Kinsley, stay with me. You have to stay with me.”
His lips touch my forehead. I want to answer him. To tell him everything is going to be okay, but I can’t. My heart beats slowly in my chest, and even pressed this close to him, I’m cold. My body shakes. Another burst of heat fills my abdomen. The chill in my bones flakes off a bit.
“Gods, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have left you alone. Hang on. You’re going to be okay. I just have to get you out of here,” he mutters.
I manage to reach up and touch the side of his face. His expression breaks me up inside. I want to erase it from memory. I want it to never have existed. Someone as good as him should never have that pain etched into their features.
I wish I could tell him any of this, but I start to go cold again. My vision blurs, and I can barely feel my body.
Pressure bears down on me, and then I’m back underwater.
LOW PANTING NUDGES me awake. My eyelids flutter, and the room swims in front of me. I’m lying on something soft with strong arms wrapped around me. A moan escapes my lips, and someone beside me rustles.
“Hey, Kin. You okay?”
I groan again and try to sit up.
Charming pushes me back down against pillows. “Don’t try to move yet, okay? You’re still healing. Lost a lot of blood. I supplemented it as best I could.”
My throat feels like all of the moisture has been sucked out of it. Charming lifts my head and places a glass to my lips. It’s like he’s inside of my head. I gulp it down like I’ve been stranded in the desert for hours. When I’m finished, he presses another glass to my lips. Seconds later, it’s gone too.
I wipe my hand across my lips.
“Thank you.” My voice is still scratchy, but I feel better already. I glance around the room. I don’t recognize anything. Not the golden walls, nor the large brick fireplace directly in front of me. Not even the large silver pentagram painted on the floor. Other than the bed we’re in, the rest of the room is bare.
“Where are we?” I ask, sounding a little more like myself.
“My old spell room.” He repositions himself so that he’s looking up at me. “I haven’t been here in years.”
“Why did you bring me here?”
His eyes widen, and I swear tears well up in them for a second. He blinks hard and glances away from me. Then he sits up and clenches his jaw.
“When I walked in and I saw you laying there…” He turns back to me, his face a mask of agony. “I’m so sorry. I never should have left you alone.”
I reach for his hand and squeeze it. “Look, I don’t blame you. After what I told you… I mean, you have every right to hate me.”
His head shoots in my direction.
With pleading eyes, he grabs my other hand. “Kin, I don’t hate you.”
I glance down at the silver sheets. “It’s okay if you do. I’m a terrible person. What I did was cowardly… Unforgivable.”
He pushes my head up and holds my gaze. “That is not true. I don’t hate you. I was a little taken off guard. But when I saw you laying there like that…” He shakes his head like what he’s about to say is painful. “Well, let’s just say the last thing I felt was hate.”
My heart floods with warmth. It beats away the cold. Clearing my throat, I pull my hands away from his and lift the sheets. My top is covered in blood, but when I lift my shirt, there is no knife. No blood.
I rub a hand over the spot where Victoria stabbed me.
“I healed you up as much as I could at the house, but because I’ve been using so much magic tonight, it drained me quickly. So I got you strong enough to bring here. I needed help. It took a while, but you’ll be okay now.”
I let my shirt fall back down and smile at him. “Thank you so much.”
His eyes flash anger. “It was Victoria, wasn’t it?” He stands up and throws a furious stare down at me. “When I’m done with her, the Affliction Tree will look like a fucking trip to Disney Land.”
My heart throbs in response to his anger. For a moment, I’m touched. And relieved. Touched that he cares so much. Relieved that he doesn’t hate me. Then I’m sad. This isn’t him. Not even a little. I’ve stopped questioning how I can feel so connected to one person in less than twenty-four hours, because it doesn’t matter. I just am. And it’s real. Insane, yes, but real. More real than anything in my life.
I reach out for him. He stares at my outstretched hand before taking it. I pull him back onto the bed with me.
“No.” I shake my head and push his hair back off his forehead. “You’ll do no such thing. That’s her, not you. And I don’t want you to be anything like her or any of them. If you were, I wouldn’t…”
I stop. Suddenly my words feel stuck to my tongue. I gulp them down and try again. After all, I’ve faced my biggest fears tonight. Threw away drugs. Admitted the darkest moment of my life to the person I want to see me only as good. Saying this should be nothing. Saying this will be the truest thing I’ve ever said.
“If you were anything like Victoria, I wouldn’t love you. Don’t take that away from me.”
His eyes widen. Then he clears his throat. For a second, I’m afraid he won’t say it back. That he’ll call me crazy. Then I realize I don’t care. I fucking love his ass. I can’t explain why, but I figure that’s the most basic definition of the word. Something you can’t explain that, for some reason, makes you a better version of yourself. Even if he’s not feeling what I’m feeling, he’s still made me a better Kinsley. And for that alone, I love him.
Finally, he smiles and cups my face in his hands. “I love you too, Kin.”
My eyes stretch wide, and he laughs.
“Does that surprise you?” he asks.
I blink a few times and place a strand of hair in my mouth. “Kind of,” I say around it.
“Even the way you eat your hair when you’re nervous is sexy.” He laughs. “How messed up is that?”
I grin, not spitting my hair out. “Pretty messed up.” I glance down then peer back up at him. “Say it again.”
He smiles. “Say what again?”
I give him a look.
He laughs. “I love you, Kin.” He scoots closer to me and tugs my hair out of my mouth. “I love that you dyed your hair more than one color at once because you couldn’t decide on one.”
I lift an eyebrow. “How did you know that?”
He shrugs. “I just do. I love that you don’t know you’re beautiful and dynamic and powerful. And I love how you care so much, you run from things that hurt even though I hope you’ll stop doing that.” He leans forward and presses his lips against mine. “I just love you. I didn’t expect to, but I do.”
“Say it again,” I whisper.
“I love you.” He leans me back against the pillows and kisses me slowly, feeling every inch of my lips. “I love you.”
We take our time. I kiss every inch of his body. He kisses every inch of me. We run our fingers across nipples and down thighs. We kiss long, deep, and slow. He buries his face in my hair, presses his ear against my chest, and listens to my heartbeat. I do the same. I need to make sure that he is real. That this is real.
Drugs don’t have anything on this.
Nothing does.
He slides himself inside of me, and I thr
ow my head back, calling out his name. My Charming. I sit on top of him and relish in his expression as he gazes up at me. He’s in awe. I ride him with a confidence I didn’t know I had the potential for. We twist and turn between the sheets, ripping them from the bed. We make love all over the room, never tiring, always begging for more. We were born to do this.
Finally, we collapse on top of the stripped bed and tangle our limbs around each other’s.
“It’s five o’clock,” he whispers into my ear.
“Yes.”
He sighs. “Whenever you want to hold the hours in your hand, they wind up sliding through your fingers.”
I nod and smile. “Well, we’re going to spend many hours together. Hopefully doing a lot more of this.”
He doesn’t say anything. And it’s not just that he doesn’t say anything, it’s the nature of his silence. It slices through my skin like that kitchen knife. It empties everything out of me.
I’m being paranoid.
Turning to him, I can tell that I’m not. His expression is something you’d expect to find on a man having his teeth pulled without the benefit of Novocain.
“Right?” I ask, desperation creeping into my voice.
He meets my gaze with an expression full of a contagious pain.
“Charming?”
He sighs and looks down. “I’m afraid not, Kinsley.”
I shoot up and pull the sheets up to my chin. “What? What are you talking about?”
Slowly, he looks up. Tears well in his eyes.
“It’s five-oh-two,” he says.
I just stare at him. He meets my gaze, his face full of the strain of someone trying to lift something way too heavy for him.
“I think it’s time I told you my real name.”
I nod, my heart pounding painfully in my chest. “Okay.”
“My name is Kai,” he says, looking at me with meaning. “Kai Wilson.”
21
I’M ON THE floor. He’s still talking, and I’m on the floor, rocking myself like a traumatized child. I’m on the floor, wrapped in silver sheets, rocking myself like a mental patient.
And he’s still talking.
He won’t stop talking.
But what he’s saying can’t be real.
It can’t be.
I shut my eyes and press my hands against my ears. He has to stop talking. If he stops talking, maybe this won’t be real. Maybe he wouldn’t have just said the most impossible thing he could have said to me.
His name is Kai Wilson.
Kai Wilson, the guy I hit one year ago with my car. Kai Wilson, who is currently at Metroplex Hospital in a coma that I put him in.
No. No. No. This cannot be happening. This isn’t happening. If this guy’s name is Kai, then I’m in a reality I can’t handle.
So Charming grabs my hands and yanks them away from my ears. I stare at him as he settles himself on the floor in front of me. His blue eyes look like a weeping sea.
“Are you okay?” he asks in a soft voice.
I continue to stare at him. Is he serious? Is he asking a serious question? Am I okay? How can I possibly be okay? How will anything ever be okay again?
I shake my head. “What you’re saying… It’s impossible.”
He reaches for my hand, and I snatch it back. I feel like an ice box has slammed down around my heart.
“Kinsley. I’m telling you the truth.”
“No.” I shake my head. “It’s impossible. Kai Wilson is in a coma. You and I… we’ve had sex. Lots of it. Can’t have sex with a guy in a coma.”
He sighs. “You can on All Hallows’ Eve.”
I stare at him dumbly.
“It’s not just the dead that can walk free tonight. Anyone that’s near death can, as well. We can become solid. I assure you, I’m Kai Wilson. It’s why I was at the Harker estate. I went there to find you.”
A giant has come into my life, ripped it into tiny pieces, and then let those pieces scatter in the wind, leaving me to grasp at them. Only I won’t be able to put them together again.
The picture will always be missing a few pieces. The most important pieces.
I can’t even cry. All I can do is stare at him.
“I came there to find you. My intention was to give you a piece of my mind. To tell you what you stole from me. What you put my parents through, my little sister.” He shakes his head. “Then I saw you standing there in the attunement room. You were so beautiful. But it was more than that. I felt an instant connection to you.”
My mouth opens and shuts. I reach for something to say, but my brain can’t form words, and even if it could, my tongue is too weak to push them out.
“I wanted to know you. And I wanted you to know me. So I made up some bullshit so I could spend time with you.” He smiles even though his face is draped in sadness. “And it’s been the best night of my life.”
My eyelids flutter. His lips keep moving, but sound fades into the background, and his lips seem to move in slow motion. Somehow I manage to stand up and stagger around the room. I swirl around in circles, the world going dizzy around me.
He’s still talking.
My mind is running circles around itself, trying to make sense of this. Even though I can barely see, I start to pull on my clothes on. For some reason, it doesn’t seem like a great time to be naked. When I turn back to him, he’s back in his jeans, and he’s got his hands planted on his hips.
I open my mouth then shut it again.
He sighs. “Kin, please just say something.”
Just like that, him saying my name drives a knife through me. I wish Victoria was here so that could be more than a metaphor. I’d really rather have an actual knife stabbing me in the heart.
How could things shift so quickly? How can the sound of him saying my name one moment fill me with the greatest warmth, and now, such absolute cold? He moves toward me, and I back away, holding up a hand.
“Just. . .” My voice comes out shaking. “Give me a minute.”
He stops and nods.
I turn away from him and squeeze my eyes shut. After several moments of tense silence, I say, “I just need to make sure I understand.”
“Okay.”
Slowly, I turn around and force myself to meet his gaze. “You sought me out…to punish me…for what I did to you?”
He nods.
I swallow. “And you’re able to do that because you’re near death.”
He nods again.
“And I can touch you because you’re not completely dead…” At this point, I’m just repeating everything he’s told me.
“That’s right. As soon as six thirty struck, I felt myself leaving my body.” He smiles. “I was whole for the first time in a year. I wanted to go see my family, but I couldn’t…” He looks down. “I couldn’t do that to them. So my thoughts turned to you. I realized this would be my only opportunity to talk to you or anyone else.”
I nod. “So, you couldn’t do that to them…but you could do it to me?”
His face falls.
I throw my hands up. “How could you do this to me?”
He moves toward me again, and I back up until I’m pressed against the wall.
“I didn’t know you, Kinsley. I sought you out in anger. In rage. So yeah, I did this to you. Then we made this connection, and I didn’t know if I should tell you. I thought about not saying anything, just disappearing at six thirty, but then I couldn’t do that. I had to tell you.”
I hug myself.
“Why?” I ask in a choked voice.
His eyebrows come together. “Why what?”
I run my hands through my hair and leave my fingers clutched at the crown of my head. “Why did you tell me this?” I close my eyes and start rocking again. “I can’t handle this, Kai.” I gasp. It hurts so much to say his name. “I can’t handle this.”
His hand brushes my cheek. “Look at me, Kin.”
I close my eyes. “No, I can’t.”
“You have to.
We don’t have much more time.”
The tears that wouldn’t come practically sear my eyes then roll down my cheeks.
“Please, Kin. You have to look at me.” He pulls me into his arms.
My entire body tenses up, and I start to sob. He holds me against his chest and runs a hand down my hair.
“I’m so sorry.” He kisses the top of my head. “I’m so sorry, baby.”
I punched a huge hole in his life, and he’s apologizing to me.
“No, I’m sorry, Kai. I’m s-so, so sorry!”
I feel him nod his head. “I know you are, baby. And I want you to forgive yourself.”
I peer up at him. “How can I possibly do that?”
“Because you love me.” He gives me a weak smile. “And I can’t stand to see you beat yourself up over this anymore.”
I shake my head. “I don’t know if that’s something I can give you.”
“You’re wrong.” His eyes narrow. “You have so much strength within you, Kin. And the biggest heart I’ve ever felt.”
I sniffle like a young child and resist wiping my nose with my hand.
“You have to forgive yourself, Kinsley. You have to be brave because I have a favor to ask you, and if you refuse me…well…” He grabs my hands and places them against his chest. His eyes go wide and vulnerable, like a little boy who’s about to ask his parents for something he can’t live without. “I don’t know what I’ll do if you refuse me, Kinsley.”
I swallow a phantom lump. “Anything,” I tell him. “Just ask and it’s yours.”
At first, he doesn’t speak. The quiet becomes like a plastic bag tied over my face. My hands are tied behind my back so I can’t rip it off. Can’t get any air into my lungs.
He squeezes my hands harder and pleads to me with the most heartbreaking look I’ve ever seen on anyone’s face. Not even my mom looked in this much agony when my father passed.
He takes in a deep breath and says his next words so fast I almost miss them.
“My parents have my medical proxy. I need you to go speak to them, convince them to pull the plug. And if they won’t do it, I want to be handfasted to you tonight so that you can do it.” His lips quiver as he draws me closer. “I need you to pull the plug on me, Kinsley. I can’t do this anymore.”
Wicked Legends: A Dystopian Paranormal Romance and Urban Fantasy Collection Page 189
