The Cruelest Chaos (Unsainted, #3)

by K.V. Rose

“I don’t know if I love her. I don’t know if I’ll let her fucking die. This might be news to you, but I haven’t exactly treated her like a goddamn delicate flower and I’m not so sure I’m not just using her to get some of this bullshit we deal with out—” “Some girls like that shit,” Lucifer interrupts me coolly with a frown, his head still leaned against his seat as he watches me. “Sid does. Shit, I like treating her like shit, too.” He taps the side of his head. “I’m sure there’s a perfectly good, psychological reason for why her and I are so terribly unstable, but I don’t care what the reason is. She likes it. I like it. Save your flower bullshit. The girl probably doesn’t want it, and I know you damn sure don’t.”

All this time away from Ella…it feels like forever, too.

It’s the 6’s, sure, but he’s paranoid because he loves her. He doesn’t want anything to happen to her. That’s an excuse all tormentors give in regard to their victim, but it doesn’t really make it any less valid.

“There’s no difference between love and hate, Mavy. The opposite of those is indifference, and if you could hurt me, if you could like it, I mattered to you. Just like I mattered to her.”

“Ella, no—” She turns to glare at me, fire in her green eyes. I hesitate, but she yanks away and…I let her go. I won’t be Lucifer. I won’t be my father. I won’t be every man in the fucking 6. If my girl wants to do something, she’s gonna fucking do it. And she does.

“I love him so much,” Sid whispers, pain in her words. “And that’s why I have to leave him.”

Sometimes you leave the things you love, to keep them safe from just how strong your love can be. Because you love them enough to save them from yourself.

And then Sid and Ria walk out with Jeremiah Rain, and I don’t stop them.

Fuckkkk

He calls Sid’s name over and over, like a broken plea.

As I taste his tears on my tongue, I realize that love is strange. It can be mad, and it can be a cruel sort of chaos. It can be violent and terrible and damaging. That part I’ve understood, since I was a kid. What I didn’t get was that…it’s okay. It doesn’t matter how awful it is. There is no right way to love. There’s no wrong way, either, not really. It’s out of our hands. Love is love, and it meets people exactly where they’re at. Ella met me, and I her. And the both of us met my brother, and I know that Jeremiah and Sid met one another, too. As much as I might hate that, I can’t fight it. Neither can they.

“I’m not good, Mavy,” I mumble against him. He keeps stroking my hair. “You are, baby. You’re perfect. For me, you’re perfect.”

“No,” he answers me. “No more. I own you, remember?” I laugh against him, glad the moment has passed. It’s too nice outside, too beautiful for us to be angry. “I own you too, asshole.” “You mean you don’t want me tracking down other girls in the woods and slapping the shit out of them?”

close, my lips over his, my voice soft. “I’ll kill you. And if you do what Sid did to Lucifer,” my eyes flick to the door at his back and his expression changes to something darker, “I won’t sit around and cry. I’ll fucking find you and kill you, and whoever you try and run off with.” He laughs. “Such big threats for such a little girl, baby. I don’t think you’d have it in you to kill me.”

“I fucking love you and I didn’t see you coming. I never saw this coming, okay? But I love you and your fucking red hair and your freckles and how you could eat everything in my goddamn house and still want more. I love how you beg me, how you want me to hurt you, how you kiss me. How you’ve defended me more than anyone else has in my life.”

“I love you, goddammit, and I need you to tell me now if you’ve changed your mind. If you don’t feel the same way.”

I roll my eyes, unseen by him. “You have a pregnant girl chained up to your guest bed right now, Jeremiah. Don’t start freaking out on me yet and add verbal abuse to your list of sins.”

Those last words are bitter. A little violent. And I can’t help but smile. That’s the boy I know. A boy of ruin.