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“You tell me what I can do for fifty, and I’m gonna fucking do it, because I’m not a good guy. I’m not helping you out of the kindness of my heart, and I don’t care that you’re holding a torch for my brother. I’ll blow the flame out and leave you in complete darkness if you let me.”
My skin feels like it’s on fire, and the flames in the green eyes before me have the potential to make it so much worse. Maybe there’s something to be said about getting burned on purpose, a certain level of control afforded to you when deciding how far into the flames you travel. Then again, some fires, once stepped into, grow. Some consume you. I want to know what that feels like.
“I hope you find whatever it is you’re searching for, before the corpses in your yard become too plentiful to bury.”
“Don’t take off, thinking you can outrun me. You can’t. I know these grounds like the back of my hand, and I am bigger, stronger, faster. If you make me chase you, I will catch you.”
“And if I catch you,” he says, stepping closer, gaze burning hot, “I keep you. Forever. Think very carefully about what you want your future to look like, Little Echo, because I’m the one with the power to make it so. Either take off your clothes and earn your next paycheck, or don’t. Run. You’ll find very quickly how dangerous I can actually be.”
The look in his eyes confirms the compulsion. His gaze is chaos and anguish, heat and yearning.
My veins ignite, confusion burning a path to my heart. Doe eyes gloss over as they lift to mine, outlined by the mysterious red liquid smeared all over her delicate face. She doesn’t look particularly delicate now. She’s the volatile sort of sunshine—the implosion before the world ceases to exist. And she’s aiming destruction right at me.
“The universe created you with me in mind,” he says in a low, thick voice. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were sent by the stars themselves. Plucked from the constellations and tossed into the path of someone needing guidance.”
If this is what wrong feels like, I don’t want to be right ever again.
“What the hell are you doing to me?” I mutter, cupping her cheek in one of my palms as she stops before me.
“I wasn’t prepared for the sort of addiction you’d be.”
“You are a beacon of light, Little Echo. You shine in any room. I would never be able to not notice.”
I tuck the sunflower stem behind her ear, reveling in the juxtaposition of two ostensibly beautiful things. One forged by the earth, destined to chase the sunlight forever. The other the sun itself: warm, bright, and the center of my fucking universe.
It’s then I realize it isn’t the mountain that’s the problem. I’m not going mad because of altitude sickness, but of my complete and utter addiction to this woman.
“Stop staring.” He shakes his head. “I can’t.” My arms fall to my sides. “Why not?” “Because I think I’m in love with you.”
The world could surrender to flames all around us, and the only thing I’d give a shit about was that she was with me, and I, her.
“There’s nothing she could do that would make me stop loving her. It’s … instinctual. My soul is bound to hers.” Even if she doesn’t exactly know it. “I’d be content to just exist in her orbit.”
“If she’s dead, burn the mansion down with me in it. I am not interested in a life without the sun.”
Forgiveness might be a gift, but not everyone deserves it. Ultimately, the gift is to yourself—and that isn’t one you have to give out if you don’t want to.
