Page 38 of Claimed
“Caine? Answer me?” Tears fall down her face. “Why are you doing this? Why are you acting this way? What’s wrong?”
Her question rips a laugh from me, but there is no humor in it. “What’s wrong?” I demand.
She jerks at my tone.
My fingers tighten around my phone until it creaks.
“I love you, Lilah.” The words are sour on my tongue, choking me. “I fucking love you and you don’t love me.”
Her silence is all I need to hear.
My head shakes and I raise my finger to end the call.
“If you hang up that phone, Caine, so help me fucking god I will be on the next plane to Miami.” Her voice hardens to iron. “I know you think you love me, but—”
“I don’t think, Lilah,” I tell her, my tone fiercer than I have ever used with her. “I know. I have known. For months.”
She watches me. “Caine, you’re—”
“A demon?” I ask. “Incapable of love?”
Her lips mottle with anger. “My friend,” she hisses. “I know you’re Asmodean, idiot. And do you honestly think that has ever meant shit to me?” Another tear falls. “Every damn time I’ve needed you, you have dropped whatever you’re doing. You’ve been there for me as a friend more than even Raina or Nisha.”
“Then why him, Lilah?” I ask, my stomach tight. “Why Ruin?”
“Because I love him, Caine. As much as you think you love me, what I feel for Ruin is more than that. It’s deeper.” She leans into the screen. “I’m not belittling what you feel. But when I thought he would die after the trial, do you know that I planned on joining him?”
All the air leaves me and I crash to my knees in the sand. “No.” The one word is a croak. A bleak denial. My eyes close, blocking out her face. The one I have memorized. The one that haunts my dreams.
There is no world without Lilah. Without her laugh, her fierce spirit.
And she didn’t tell me that she was feeling like that. She kept smiling. Just like I have been.
“Yes, Caine,” she breathes. “A world without Ruin in it … It’s not one I want to be in.” She sniffs. “But I told him the truth on how I felt and he was furious. Just like I’m pissed at you now.”
She pauses.
“I love you, Caine. So very much—”
“Just not enough,” I mutter.
“Don’t do that,” she demands. “Don’t you dare cheapen how much I care about you. Make it seem less. You are my family, Caine. My best friend in the entire world. And I do love you. Demon pain in the ass and all, I loveyou.” Her voice throbs with emotion. “If something happened to you …” She trails off on a sob and my eyes fly wide, seeing the stark pain she is trying so hard to keep at bay.
She takes a deep breath. “When Ruin called and told me …” One pale hand presses to her chest as her exhale rattles. “I couldn’t breathe.” She fists her shirt. “I couldn’t fucking breathe, do you understand?”
My eyes roam over her as her honesty leaves me weak. Leaden. “I’m sorry, Lilah.”
Her head shakes, tossing her long ponytail. “Sorry does not cut it, Caine. It doesn’t change this. Whatever is going on with you, you need help. I don’t want to lose you. I can’t. Maybe it’s selfish, but I can’t lose you.”
We stare at each other and the pain inside me is a direct mirror to what rests in her bright eyes.
She scrubs at her face as the tears flow faster. “I see a therapist now,” she murmurs. “Twice a week. And it’s helped. A lot.”
“I don’t want to go to therapy, Lilah.”
“Yeah because god forbid you stick around to be a fucking god parent or something.”
My eyes widen. “Are you—”
