Page 85 of Illusory

“Finish what you started,” I rasped, practically begging him for it—begging him to have his way with me.

Another rough exhale hissed through his lips. And then the fire in his eyes diminished, snuffed out by something far more lethal and destructive to both of us. “And then what?” he asked, an almost tangible sadness creeping back into his eyes as though he were being haunted by it.

I furrowed my brows at him, unsure if he was asking me literally or figuratively.

“Are you going to choose me tomorrow, angel? Is that what you’re telling me now? Because I don’t think that it is.” He chuckled darkly, his face so close to mine that I could practically taste him. “So where does that leave us if not precisely where we are right now?”

All I had to do was pout my lips out and they’d be on his. “I happen to like where we are right now.”

He pressed his forehead against mine and closed his eyes, breathing me in like I was the only thing that could fill his lungs with life. “And what of tomorrow, angel? What happensthen when you’re still in love with the both of us, and I’m still in the way?”

My throat tightened, as though reality had reached out to choke me with its gangly, unforgiving fingers again, and then the fire inside me was gone too. “Stop saying that,” I demanded as a mixture of sorrow and anger crept in to burn its reminder under my lids. “Stop saying you’re in the way.”

“Why not? It’s the truth,” he stated simply, as though it were some sort of fact we couldn’t erase. “He’s your soulmate, angel, and I am not. The Fates didn’t deem me worthy enough this time around.” His lips twisted into a sad smile as he grazed his knuckles against my cheek again, my tears chasing his hand all the way down my face. “All I had holding you to me was our bloodbond, and soon, he will have that too.”

I jerked back, as if to put space between myself and his words. As if the whole of my body needed to reject them. “No. That’snot true. That’s not what’s holding me to you, and you know it! And I won’t drink from him. I won’t seal the bond. I’ll never seal it.” I had no idea why I’d said that or even what I thought I was trying to prove to him.

All I knew was that I didn’t want to lose him. That every time he pulled away from me, it felt like he was taking a piece of my soul with him. That I was slowly breaking apart in a way that I knew could never again be mended by anything or anyone but him. And I hated it. I hated all of it. The unfairness. The hopelessness. The way it made me want to sob and scream and rage against all of it.

“That’s a nice thought, angel, but what will that change?” he asked regretfully, like he already knew the answer. Like it wouldn’t change a damn thing.

“I…I don’t know.” But it had to mean something. It had to. “I just…I want this all to stop. I want us to go back to the way it was before. I want you to love me the way you did before,”I said as tears gathered in my eyes like a storm cloud, blotting out the firmament as they readied themselves to pour down and drown me in their sorrow.

His lips coiled into a smile made entirely of remorse. “I cannot do that, angel.”

“Why not? Tell me why we can’t go back?” I pleaded, feeling the world mercilessly closing in on me faster than I could track.

“Because I don’t love you the way I did before.”

At his words, the clouds broke, and mounds of sorrow rained down my cheeks because that wasn’t the answer I wanted to hear. I reared back, trying to climb off his lap, desperate to get away from the pain that was gouging out my heart, but he tightened his hold on me and kept me in place.

“You’ve misunderstood me,” he said as he swiped his thumb across my cheek and wiped away the tears, making my entire body melt back into his arms. “I could never love you the way I did before because it waslessbefore. I have only ever fallen deeper in love with you every day that I have known you, and I know with devastating certainty that tomorrow, I will love you even deeper still.”

My heart raged against my ribcage as I tried to focus on him through the blur of tears that distorted my vision.

“But the deeper I fall in love with you, the harder it is for me to love you selfishly. To recklessly take the thing I desire most in this world.” He eyed me then like I was the thing he was talking about, and for the first time in my life, I knew that I was. “I think that perhaps if I loved you the way I did before, I might be able to still do that—to take you selfishly. But it’s not yesterday anymore, angel, and I can never love you less now.”

A thousand tears fell from my eyes then, falling freely into a bottomless chasm of despair that I knew would onlycontinue to grow every day that I was without him until the day that it would eventually swallow me whole.

Because he was right.

The only way that I could end this pain and stop him from drifting further and further away from me was to say those impossible three words to him. To choose him.

But he knew as much as I did that I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t say those words to him any more than I could say them to Trace. What I had with them before, that was over.

Yesterdaywasgone, no matter how much I wanted to live there again, to freeze time and stay in my bubble with the two men I loved most in the world, where I’d never have to choose between them or fathom the agony of living even a single day without them in my arms.

Those days were gone forever now. All we had was today and today wasn’t nearly as good as it used to be, and frankly, tomorrow wasn’t looking all that better either.

27. DISAPPEARING ACT

I startled awake the next morning to the smell of bacon and eggs wafting through my room and my psycho sister standing over my bed, leering down at me at like I had committed some unspeakable act while I’d been sleeping.

“What the hell are you doing?!” I half-shrieked, half-croaked as I scrambled up into a seated position, clutching the blanket to my chest like it was some scandal to be caught in my ‘When it rains, it Poes’t-shirt. “I think my fucking soul just left my body,” I mused to myself as I tried to will my racing heart back to a normal pace.

“Mom didn’t come home last night.”

I blinked up at her, literally still half asleep.

---