“I’m sorry,” I whisper to him, my words trailing off into a cry. “I just…”
I’m so mad.
I’m so lost.
So scared.
And yet with each sharp pump upward from his hips, each scrape of the bark along the back of my head, each time he catches my skin between his teeth, the fear goes to the background.
“Promise me,” he says, giving another punishing thrust, my neck arching from the impact, my mouth falling open as he drags himself over every coiled nerve. “Promise me we don’t fight like that anymore. We don’t get vicious. We don’t purposely hurt each other.”
His words trail off, his grip tightening around me. “Fucking hell, Perry,” he says, breathless. He lifts his head to stare at me, lust and love and sorrow in his eyes, his mouth wet from kissing my neck. “We can’t afford to fight like this.”
“But we can afford to make up like this,” I say as he lets out a rich groan, his hips slamming into me again, knocking the air from my lungs.
“We fight and then we fuck. In that order,” he says, pressing his forehead against mine. “But we don’t fight like we fuck, okay?” He lets out a low curse and then pins me against the tree, his hand against my throat as he pumps inside me. “Not us.” His hand goes off my throat and back to my jaw, holding my face. “Promise me.”
“I promise,” I whisper, before he kisses me viciously, consuming me, and the pressure inside me starts to build. The hurried breath of him at my mouth, the fact that we’re fucking in public, the emotions from the entire evening are swirling around us, it’s all coming together in a hurricane. “I love you.”
“I love you.”
He grunts roughly, and with a few deep, hard shoves, his brings us both over the edge. We come hard, holding on tight, our bodies melding together like liquid metal.
But when he lowers me off the tree with trembling hands, my own legs shaking from holding his waist, I don’t feel any stronger. The connection I have with him that usually feels unbreakable now feels precarious. Like one wrong move and it could all come crashing down.
The sex didn’t help this time. It was only a Band-Aid, a balm on the wound. Something to soothe the fear and the anger and hopelessness inside me, but it did nothing to eradicate it.
“Perry,” Dex says to me, grabbing my hand and pulling me to him. He reaches over and smooths the hair behind my head. “I’m really sorry I didn’t tell you. I’ve been wrestling with it for weeks and I feel…I feel terrible. The worst. Like a fucking jackass. I didn’t mean to hurt you and I know I have and I wish I could take it back.”
I nod. I’m still really hurt, and I still think he made the wrong choice, but I understand where Dex was coming from. “I’m sorry I said those awful things. I didn’t mean them.” I pause, eying his cheek. “And I’m sorry I slapped you.”
He rubs at his face and gives me a quick smile. “I actually deserved that. Better than you getting me in the nose again, anyway.” He cups my face in his hands. “Ready to go back to the party?”
I nod. The party. I forgot all about that.
He kisses me lightly and then grabs my hand, leading me out of the park.
But for all it seems like we’ve made up, I know that something changed tonight. That I showed both him and myself a part of me that I’ve tried to keep hidden. And that maybe I’ve damaged us in ways I can’t even imagine.
No. I can already imagine what it’s changed.
I feel it in my soul, and in my bones.
And I know it’s going to kill me.
Eighteen
At three a.m. Samantha pays me a visit.
I wake up because she places her fingers on my eyelids, cold as icicles, and physically pries my eyes open until I’m staring at her awful face, just inches away.
“You had your chance,” she says in a low, metallic voice, her mouth this fathomless pit of evil, moving with a million black tongues. “You should have taken it Perry.”
Her fingers trail to the side of my face where she gently strokes my cheek, her eyes turning from all white to black to white again. I can’t move at all, can’t breathe, can’t speak. It’s like she’s reached into my chest and put an icy hand over my lungs, over my heart, holding them hostage.
“I was trying to help you,” she goes on, the rasp of her voice twisting my gut with fear. “I was trying to get you to see your potential. Your power. If you had listened to me, you wouldn’t be in this position.”
What position is that?
A grave expression comes over her. “You don’t know? You’re the sacrificial lamb.” She smiles. “I tried to give you an out. You could have joined me. We could have won together. You could have stopped this all. But you didn’t, because you’re weak. You’re pathetic. You’re very much in love, and love doesn’t even exist.”
She runs her finger over my lips and it feels like she’s freezing them solid.
“The next time I see you will be the last time I see you,” she says. “But I won’t be alone. I tried for so long to get you to see your potential, but I don’t have the strength to try anymore. You’re just a lost cause. You always have been.”
What do you mean you won’t be alone?
She gives me a smile that’s both sad and terrifying. “You know what I mean. You know that I’m cursed, and will continue to be cursed until you set me free. But you don’t want to do that anymore, I can tell. It doesn’t matter. I will find my way. But you…you have lost your way. And when you lose your way, you’ll so easily be led. Believe me on that.”
Then she gets up and starts moving backward until she fades into the shadows of the room and then she’s completely gone.
It’s only then that I manage to breathe.
I wake up hungover, my body reeling from all the drinks last night.
My mind is reeling too. Not just over what’s happening to my father, or that Dex and I had the worst fight of our lives, or that even sex did nothing to put us back together. But that Samantha paid me a visit in the middle of the night.
The last time she’d be alone.
I don’t have to think much to know what she meant by that. For whatever reason, perhaps Samantha was trying to save me all this time? Or maybe that’s what she wants me to think. Either way, when she comes back, she’ll have the curse with her, the demon, and I know in my heart of hearts that it will be the end of me. That the both of them will take me to some place I can’t come back from.
Dex isn’t beside me, but I hear him in the kitchen, smell bacon sizzling on the stove. Normally I’d be all over this him making me breakfast after letting me sleep in, but my appetite is gone. I doubt I’ll even be able to get down dry toast.
I get up and step out of the bedroom, my mouth dry, feeling so incredibly delicate, like all my bones might break with one wrong step.
“Morning,” he says to me, giving me a quick smile over his shoulder as he stands at the stove. “How are you feeling?”
I just stare at him, my words slow. I shake my head and carefully walk forward, leaning against the island. “I don’t know how I feel.”