Page 60 of Dead Love

“I heard the door, and you didn’t come down.” Her eyes flicked to the ground and she rubbed her hands down her pants. “So I came up.”

It was a simple response, like she could never hate me for anything, and yet we both knew the reality. Ihadbroken her, transformed her until she was nothing like her old self, and now we were here, dancing around what we knew would haunt us for the rest of our lives.

“Remember when I asked what you wanted out of life?” I asked, softening my voice. I hated myself for it, but I couldn’t stop it. “Have you thought about that?”

She cleared her throat, giving a high-pitched laugh. I didn’t relax my gaze. I wanted her to feel it, to know my truth.

“I’ve always wanted to run my own greenhouse,” she finally said. She waited for my reaction, but I gave none. “That way, I can take care of the kinds of plants I love all year long. I would never have to worry about seasons or anything like that. I could be on my own and still work with my mother. Partner with her. Something like that.”

A greenhouse would give her autonomy, a place to focus her passions, but were plants her passion because she had never seen the world? Never given anything else a chance?

“Don’t you want freedom?” I asked. “Freedom to do what you want. To explore. To try everything. Without your mother?”

Without me?

“It’d be nice to do some things by myself,” she shrugged with a smile, “but I miss her.”

I wanted to rip off her head and shake her until she made sense. “There is more to life than pleasing your mother,” I snarled. “She never let you do anything.”

“She was only trying to protect me. Like you are.”

My heart stilled. Silence overcame us. The difference between Shea and I was that I had always planned to get rid of Kora. I was never supposed to protect her.

But I had.

The best option was to burn Kora. Bury the ashes. Cover her up with another person’s body, so that there was no way they could trace her back to me. And there weren’t any more reasons to keep her alive. I had already destroyed her false sense of security, of safety, of love. I could crush her one last time, throw her into the retort, and watch her burn.

And if I needed to, I could do the same thing to Catie.

But I didn’t want to kill anyone. Especially not Kora. I wanted to run away this time, to find a safe place for us to survive.

But Kora deserved more than survival. She deserved the fucking world.

Some stupid sensation in my chest made it feel like Kora was living inside of me, like she had control of me. But Kora wasn’t mine, and she never would be. She was breakable. A way to watch a family fall apart. To make sure that nothing was ever pure foranyone.Not for me. Not for the Novas. Not for Kora.

My only hope, at this point, was that Kora would tell the authorities—including her father—the truth. That I never once hurt her. That I saved her from a life of nothing. That I showed her how to breathe again.

Until then, I had to tell her the truth. What she did with that, would be her choice.

CHAPTER21

Kora

Vincent leanedback into the couch and rubbed his eyes. Something was clearly bothering him.

“Do you want to talk about it?” I asked.

He swallowed, then offered me his hand. “I want to show you something.”

They were almost the same words he had used before taking me to the garden room he had created for me, but this time, the tone felt off. Like this was something he didn’t actuallywantto show me.

“This isn’t like before,” I whispered, “Is it?”

His eyes flicked down, then returned to me. He waited, his mouth silent, but his eyes begged me to understand. To hear the words he couldn’t say.

It was dark again. The new moon was haunting, almost like it was whispering secrets to us. Vincent led me to the cemetery, his steps heavy. But instead of going to the main plots that were open to the public, he led me to the back, around one of the mausoleums. Behind a row of untouched candles, there was a rectangular hole, ready for a casket. The walls of the hole were smoothed as if Vincent had come here to touch it up recently. A daffodil was engraved on the tombstone, the strokes similar to what I had seen in his studio. The inscription read:Here Lies My Flower.

My muscles tensed. Dizziness filled me, like the world was tilting.