Page 104 of Illusory

I tried to turn and run again, to leave it all in the air where nothing was cemented but the fact that it was over, but he clutched onto my wrist harder, keeping me right where I was.

“You owe me nothing, angel. What you have given me—loving me despite all my faults and unforgivable deeds, you have already given me more love than I have ever known in my life. I could die tomorrow with nothing other than that and I would die happy because at least I’d know I wasn’t all bad. That I wasn’t all monster. I’d know that somehow along the way, I had earned the love of an Angel, and I would make that be enough for me. On the stars, I would. But I cannot do that unless I know you’re okay.”

My heart sank out of my chest like an anchor as I fought the urge to crash into his arms and never leave. To hold onto him so tightly and endlessly that they would need the jaws of life just to pry me away from him. I wanted so badly to keep being that person for him, to spend my life showing him all the ways he was worthy of love and every other good thing in this world.

And I wanted to be that for Trace too. I wanted to be the best version of myself and grow by his side. To become the woman his future-self had known me to be. To be the other half of his soul.

But I couldn’t be those things for either of them no matter how much I wished it so.

So, Iwasn’tokay, and I was never going to be okay with any of this, but it didn’t change a damn thing. Because this wasn’t about me. It was about them. It was about ensuring they would have all the things I wasn’t able to give them. It was about making sure that one day they would finallyunderstand that it was never because I didn’t love them enough to stay, but because I loved them enough to set them free.

“If you think I can just ride off into the sunset with Trace any more than I could ride off with you then you don’t know me at all.” I pulled my hand free and stepped back, my gaze moving effortlessly between him and Trace just the way it always had. “It’s like choosing between water and the air I breathe. You could force me to do it, you can even make the choice for me, but I’d still only ever be dying without the other one.”

In some ways, doing that to them was even worse than what I’d been doing up until now. Condemning them to spend the rest of their life with someone who was only ever half of a whole, who was perpetually haunted by the love they’d left behind. Reminding them each and every day that they alone couldn’t fulfill me, that they couldn’t fill the void that the other one had left. That was a wound that would never heal no matter how many times it scabbed over, and I’d never willingly inflict that on either of them.

“Is that what you want? Is that the life you want to live with me?” I asked neither one in particular because I already knew the answer to that. No one in their right mind would want to live that kind of life. It would chip away at their very soul until theirs was as tattered and ruined as mine was.

And I wouldn’t do that to them. Giving them up was the only way to save them from that unmendable ruin. It was the most selfless thing I could do for them. My one grand gesture of love.

I already knew what the future held for me if I ever made it out of this town in one piece. I was the Daughter of Hades, enemy of The Order, and friend to no one, cursed to wander through life with a target on my back and an empty heart, andI was okay with that if it meant they would be spared.

“I know you can’t see it now,” I said as I wiped at my tear-soaked cheeks and lifted my chin, “but I’m doing this for you. For both of you. And one day when you both have all the things you deserve and I’m nothing but the ghost of a bad memory, you’ll understand why I did it and you’ll know.You’ll know.”

I turned to leave the room without sparing a glance back in their direction, feeling the fine cracks inside my heart splintering outward with every step I took away from them and forcing my feet to keep moving despite it. And when they tried to come after me, I steeled my heart and called on my magic, blasting it out of me with the sorrow of a thousand broken hearts and into the beautiful boys I loved.

Their movements halted mid-step, perfectly frozen in place, and I left them that way, pausing only to briefly memorize the gutted looks on their faces before running upstairs to my bedroom and locking the door behind myself.

I vowed never to forget how they looked in that moment.

To never forget what my brand of love had done to them.

In the shrouded darkness of my room, I slid to the floor and buried my face in my hands, listening on as my heart continued to crack and break apart in my chest. It would have been easier to ignore it—to distract myself with something that crowded everything in my mind, but instead, I forced myself to listen to every note of heartache, refusing to let myself go numb to it even when my body begged for relief.

It was better like that. Better to rip it all off like a bandage and let the shattered pieces drop where they may. The sooner my heart died, the sooner I could rise again as something else. Something that could live with the gaping hole in her chest. Something so cold and so hard that she wouldn’t need air or water to exist at all.

33. LONELY HEARTS CLUB

Dominic and Trace spent most of the night camped outside my bedroom door despite my refusal to answer any of their calls or respond to the dozen or so times they had knocked at my door during the course of the night.

I thought I had been more than clear that I was ending things with both of them, but apparently the message hadn’t gotten completely through to them. They seemed to think the conversation wasn’t over, though I honestly had no idea what more I could say to either one that would make it any clearer to them. It was over. There was no future for either one of them with me and nothing they could say was going to change that.

I fully understood that now, but it seemed that they were going to need more time to see it too. Unfortunately for me, I was going to have to suffer through the waiting period and the agonizing torment of still having them around me—where I could see, hear, andfeelthem—until they did.

Even curled up on the complete opposite side of my room, far away from their muffled voices and the pacing footfalls that were practically begging for me to end their misery, I still felt them all night long. The incessant pull inside my chest never wavered, pleading with me at every tick of the clock to throw away my plan and what little remained of my morals and open the door for them instead.

I didn’t, of course, but so much of mereallywanted to.

Being that close to them without being able to bewiththem was torture of the highest order. It was dangling a homemade, still-warm apple pie in front of a starving childand telling them not to touch it.

It was cruel and painful and the worst kind of punishment imaginable.

When I finally did accept the fact that they weren’t going to be leaving my bedroom door anytime soon, I let my eyes close and allowed my exhaustion to take me. But not even sleep brought me peace as they callously haunted my dreams—dreams about opening the door and dragging them inside my room as the three of us reenacted various versions of what happened in the basement the other night. Except in my dream, neither one of us stopped it. In my dream, I felt no guilt or shame or regret. I just felt and took and loved.

I was ashamed to admit that it was one of the best dreams I’d had in a long time, but it only made me feel worse when I woke up early the next morning, sweaty and alone on the cold, hard floor as my daunting reality crept back in to torture me.

I hadn’t been so naïve as to think any of this was going to be easy, but I at least thought I’d have some solidarity within my own damned self. That my heart, mind, and body would all be standing on the same side of the line.

I’d been very, very wrong.

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