Page 96 of Illusory

And what did I do to repay him? What did I do with a gift so fucking precious and rare that most people could go their entire lives without feeling a selfless love like that? I beat it to the ground. Just like I did his heart and Trace’s and even my own. Because itwasme all along. I was the one driving this. I had the wheel this whole time and I drove us all into the fucking ground.

I was the reason this never-ending cycle of pain and heartbreak had gone on for as long as it did. Because I refused to choose. I refused to let either one of them go. I could have ended it ages ago. I could have done the right thing and made a choice or walked away or tossed up a fucking coin and decided, but instead, I let them both love me. I let them both have me. I fed into it and nurtured it and craved it until it became so big and all-encompassing that neither one of us could ever come back from it.

“I…”

The three of them stared back at me, no one saying a word as the silence cut through the room like a knife, its silent judgment and accusations waiting for me testify to all of it.

To plead my case.

To admit to my wrongs.

My lips parted on all the things I needed to say to them, to the truths I’d been running from for so long, to the apologies that I owed the both of them. Even Gabriel.

But nothing like that came out. Nothing but tears and a wracked sob that felt as though it had started in the tips of my toes and then roiled through my body, gaining traction and power before it thundered out through my mouth.

“I’m so fucking sorry,” I said as disgraced tears spilled from my eyes and down my cheeks, dripping off the edge of my jaw and down onto the shirt that bore the scarlet letter I’d worn so shamelessly for so long. “This is all my fault. All of it.You hate each other but it’s me you should be hating. I’m the one that did this to both of you. But…”

The lights flickered slowly and somberly, as though they were dying the same agonizing death my heart was.

“But I see it now. I see what I’ve done, and I’m so unbelievably sorry that I let this happen. That I hurt you both when all I wanted to do was love you.” I shook my head, more tears raining down from my eyes like water spilling from the heavens. “But I wasn’t loving either of you, was I? Not the right way anyway. Not the way you deserved. All this time, I thought I was, but I was just hurting you both, wasn’t I?” The realization made me sick to my stomach.

“Angel—” Dominic shook his head, his eyes glimmering woefully as Trace tried to take a step toward me, the fury in his eyes from earlier replaced with something much softer.

Something sadder.

Somehow,alwayssadder and never better.

Because that was what I did to them. I hurt them and made them feel sad.

“But I’m not going to do that anymore,” I declared, my chin quivering as strangled sobs corkscrewed out of me faster than I could control. “I see it now. I do and I’ll never hurt either of you again. I promise you that. I promise I’ll cut off my own hand before I ever make you feel like this again,” I said as a suffocating weight lifted off my chest as though I were finally doing the right thing. Despite the immeasurable pain and heartbreak and the agonizing loneliness I knew would come for me when this was over, I knew I was doing the right thing.

“Jemma, wait,” said Trace, trying to reach out for me as I trudged across the kitchen.

But I wouldn’t wait, and I wouldn’t string them along anymore either. I meant what I said. I was done hurting them.

I pushed his hand away and kept going, my feet slipping and sliding through the remains of the blood they had spilled for me, and I silently vowed that they would never spill another drop for me for as long as I lived.

30. ECHOES OF WHAT WAS

I didn’t run away this time. I walked. I walked out of the kitchen and down the corridor and didn’t stop until I reached the front door and then I walked through that too. I didn’t even stop when Dominic and Trace called out my name at the door, coaxing me to get back inside the house and talk to them.

I kept walking even as tiny cold flakes of snow fell from the sky, smattering and melting against my face for the first time in my life. I’d never seen snowfall outside of a movie before that very moment, but even that didn’t make me stop walking.

I shuffled down the stairs to the driveway where my Audi was parked, and I got in my car and drove. I drove so fast and far away that I was sure not even the falling snow would be able to keep up with me. I wasn’t sure how long I had driven or even where I was going until I finally pulled over on the side of the road and climbed out of my car, no longer able to see through the blur of tears that had swollen my eyes to twice their size.

Casting a sideways glare at Old Solomon’s Bridge—the place where Nikki had put the final nail in Trace’s coffin and shattered any hope of him having a normal, happy human life—I threw on the jacket I had in my back seat and then turned in the opposite direction toward the riverbank.

My face was still slick with the hundreds of tears that had fallen since I’d left my house and while the biting air felt cold against my cheeks, the pain in my heart was too encompassing for me to pay attention to anything else.

I choose neither.

Those words had been replaying in my head over and over from the moment I backed out of my driveway, watching as Trace and Dominic’s forms slowly diminished in my rearview mirror until they weren’t there at all.

Because I finally got it. I finally understood.

And I chose neither.

After everything, after all the love and tears and passion and touches and first times and do-overs and gut-wrenching pain, and intoxicatingeverything, it was finally over with both of them. It had to be, and I was sure that my heart was never going to be able to beat properly again.

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