Page 205 of Dance of Defiance
You will never be happy.
You will never be loved.
“Turn off the lights.”
My voice is leaden and dead. Roman is looking at me with pain in his eyes—not disgust, not second thoughts, just…pain.
We’re both completely silent as he switches the veranda lights off.
“Hand me that, please?”
I nod at the lit votive candle on the table next to us. When he passes it to me, as our fingers brush. I look up into his eyes, swallowing tightly.
I hold the candle near my skin, the flickering light casting shadows across the raised edges of the scars that the chaotic lines of my tattoo usually cover.
He frowns until suddenly, the light catches just right, and pain shatters his face when he sees it carved into my flesh.
F-A-G.
“Where is he.”
He whispers the words. But there’s such bone-crawling icy deadness in the whisper that it sends shivers down my spine.
He stares at my skin, his jaw clenched so tight that a vein throbs in his temple.
“Where. The fuck. Is?—”
“I don’t know, and I don’t care anymore,” I choke, pressing my forehead to his. “What happened, happened.” I shake my head. “It’s not why I’m bi. It’s not why I get off on taking away your control.”
“I wouldn’t ever think?—”
“It’s probably why I slept around so much,” I hiss, shaking as I realize that I’ve just shared this…thisthinginside me with another soul for the very first time. “It’s definitely why I never had a real, lasting relationship. ”
“Val,” he chokes, wrapping his hand around the back of my neck as we press our foreheads together.
“It’s why I never looked for love. I knew I was never going to find it.”
“You—”
“Until you, wreckage,” I whisper, shaking, tears running down my face as I grab him by the back of the neck and hold him tightly. “I knew I was never going to find love until I metyou. And wreckage,” I choke, trembling as I pull him into my lap, “I fucking love you so much it hurts.”
“I love you, too.”
The words fall like a prayer against my lips before we crash together.
And for the first time in my life, I don’t feel the need to keep moving. At all.
39
ROMAN
I exhale slowlyas I look up into the chilly autumn night, lower Manhattan buzzing around me. Behind me, the door to the nondescript building shuts with a soft click. I pull my jacket around my shoulders a little more tightly.
This plain, boring building acts as one of several entrances to the underground space that houses the Black Court, which has just adjourned for the night after a trial. The guilty tonight chose “flight” through the maze, which gave Nero one of his psycho boners. Fuck, he loves the thrill of the hunt.
But it’s not anything about the trial or the chase this evening that has me fighting to control my breathing and keep my pulse in check.
It’s that this was the first Black Court session since I officially quit drinking six weeks ago. Of course, the guys have all rallied behind me, to the point of unanimously suggesting that the pre-parties no longer have alcohol available. I put the brakes on that.
