Page 32 of Illusory (The Marked Saga #8)

I wasn’t sure how long I had stared out at the empty corridor with the ghosts of Gabriel’s jarring words rattling around in my head before I finally worked up the nerve to turn around and face Trace and Dominic and the twisted snare of hopelessness I’d plaited us into.

If it hadn’t already been crystal clear before, it was glaringly obvious now. We were completely and irreparably done for. A tragedy with no happy ending in sight.

Tears gathered under my lids as my gaze connected with each of theirs, knowing that I was going to have to look them in the eyes and say the words I’d never thought I’d have to utter to either of them. That I was about to break both of their hearts simultaneously and bear witness to its carnage as it distorted their features and mauled their hearts.

And I’d have no one to blame for their pain but myself.

Because it was me who had done this to us. Me who had led us here. Me who had dug this grave for the three of us, and I knew I’d spend the rest of my life living in the wreckage of it.

As much as I loved them both and wished for nothing more than to be able to keep on loving them, to have them both for as long as they’d want me, I knew that it was impossible. Not without making them both suffer continuously.

They deserved absolute devotion, to be loved implicitly, to be worshipped like the gods they were, and I couldn’t give that to them. Not entirely. Not singularly. I wasn’t going to be able to be the one to give those things to either of them. Short of splitting myself into two separate people, I’d never be able to be that for them. At best I could keep one, but not without destroying the other one in the process and that was something I would never do.

How could I ever consciously do that to the two people I loved most in this world? How could I ever pick who to keep and who to destroy? I couldn’t. I wouldn’t .

Not ever.

Choosing between the two of them had never been in the cards and I saw that now. There was truly only one way out of this, and today, I finally understood that. I had to let them both go. I had to choose neither.

The words felt lifeless and hollow in my mind, floating through my head like a piece of shrapnel slashing at all the parts of me that were keeping me together, and worse, I knew this was only the beginning. I knew that the real pain hadn’t even started yet.

Once they were gone and all that remained of them was the phantom limbs of the love I had and then lost, I knew the pain would swallow me whole then. That it would pillage me day in and day out until it eventually took everything I was and had, including my last breath.

But it still didn’t change anything.

Blinking back tears that were already forming, I watched as Dominic stalked to the bar cart to pour himself another drink. Despite my body begging for me to get closer to him, to forget everything Gabriel said and everything my own heart knew to be true, I backed away from him, giving him ample space to pour his drink and drown the sorrow that would inevitably come.

Mostly it was because I knew I wouldn’t be able to say the words I needed to say if he was right there within my reach, crowding all my senses with all the things that drove me wild and made me reckless.

His eyes sharpened, narrowing almost imperceivably as he noted my retreat from him.

My gaze dropped to my hands as I summoned the courage to face the two great loves of my life. “We need to talk,” I said, the words sounding so small and fragile that I might’ve thought I hadn’t uttered them at all if it weren’t for the way Trace and Dominic’s gazes latched onto mine like my eyes were the only things keeping them bound to this earth.

“About what?” asked Trace, still standing by the fireplace across the room, his arms crossed over his chest as he eyed me curiously. I could practically feel his whirlwind of emotions reaching out across the room at me, his soul beckoning me to forget my words and just sink into the bond instead.

I shook my head softly as though answering a question that hadn’t been spoken aloud. “About what just happened,” I answered, gesturing toward the hallway where remnants of Gabriel and his searing words still lingered in the air like a ghost that refused to leave me. “About everything.”

“My brother was out of line,” stated Dominic as if that were going to stop what was coming. He brought his refilled glass of Whiskey up to his lips and took a sip, his surveying eyes never straying from mine. “He’s the last person that should be giving anybody relationship advice or otherwise.”

That may or may not have been true, but it didn’t change the facts.

“He’s right, though. We can’t keep doing this.” I swallowed roughly against the dryness in my throat and the terrible pinch in my chest. “ I can’t keep doing this.” Not to them or to myself.

They were hurting because of me and my indecision and as long as I continued stringing them along this endless road, nothing was ever going to change for them. And I didn’t want to hurt them anymore. I didn’t want to be the reason their hearts felt heavy and their eyes welled with pain.

Trace took a step forward, his brows pulling together in apprehension. “You can’t keep doing what? What are you saying right now, Jemma?”

He knew what I was saying. He just didn’t want to know it.

“I…I’m saying this thing between us—between the three of us—it needs to stop. All of it. Right now. Me loving you both like this, leading you both on…” I shook my head roughly because I could see it all so clearly now. “It’s not right. It’s never been right.”

“You’re not leading me on,” gritted Trace, the word twisting out of him as though it were a bitter drop of poison on his tongue. “I love you and you love me.”

“Yes, I do. I really fucking do.” I nodded, not even bothering to deny it. Because this wasn’t about denying the truth or hiding from it anymore. It was about finally facing it. “But I love him just as much, Trace,” I said, my gaze briefly moving to Dominic who remained quiet and unreadable.

Other than a small tick in his jaw muscles, Trace didn’t react to my outright confession of my feelings for Dominic. He knew how I felt about him, and he’d gotten good at hiding his feelings about it, for the most part, but I still knew what my words were doing to him. I knew how badly they were knifing his insides at that very moment. And it only cemented all the reasons I needed to do this.

“You have no idea how many times I’ve tried to pray my feelings away for him, Trace. How many times I wished I could stop loving him, or stop loving you, or stop loving you both. It would have been so much easier that way,” I said, my weary eyes volleying between the two of them. “But I don’t know how to do that. I don’t know how to make my heart stop wanting what it wants, and if I haven’t been able to do it up until now, I know I probably never will.”

“Jemma—”

“But it’s wrong and I know that now,” I went on, refusing to let him stop me from saying the things that needed to be said. “I can’t commit to either of you and I’m hurting you both because of it, and for what? Because I’m selfish and greedy and can’t stand the way I feel when I’m not in your arms? Because I can’t take a full breath of air unless I’m breathing him in at the same time? I don’t have the right to do this, and I’m not going to anymore. Not ever again.”

“Look, we’ve all had a long day. You’re not thinking clearly right now. This doesn’t need to be decided tonight,” said Trace, taking another wary step towards me, clutching onto that unyielding hope that all of this would go away with just a little bit more time. That I’d eventually come to my senses and choose him.

It’s what he was always waiting for. But that wasn’t going to happen.

It had never been what was going to happen. I think somewhere deep down inside I’d always known that, and maybe that was why I’d kept them so close to my heart and refused to let either of them go. Maybe deep down I knew we were doomed and just wanted to keep holding on for as long as they’d keep letting me.

But it was wrong, and I knew that now.

“I am thinking clearly, Trace, and I’ve already made my decision,” I said as tears blurred my vision and then spilled from my eyes. “Everything is a mess because of me. You’re both hurting all the time because of me. Because I refuse to choose. Because my heart is so torn down the middle that most of the time, I’m pretty fucking sure I can actually hear the broken pieces of it banging around in my chest.” I shook my head as more tears fell down my cheeks, my gaze drifting between the two of them in search of some kind of anchor that wouldn’t gut me just to look at.

Neither one said a word as they clung to my eyes and the words leaving my lips, as though they would determine the course of their entire lives. I supposed in some way it would. They just couldn’t see that this was for the better. That they were better off without me. They couldn’t see that I was doing this for them.

They would, though. Eventually.

“I can’t be with either of you anymore. I won’t .” Trace and Dominic both took a step toward me, as though I were a prized butterfly preparing for flight, a cherished monarch they sought to keep, but I quickly matched it with a backward step of my own. “It’s over. We’re done,” I said as a sob tried to corkscrew its way out of me, but I rammed it back down into the lowest pit of my stomach.

Trace’s mouth popped open as though I’d just sucker-punched the air out of him while Dominic just stared forward, his frozen expression wracked with shame and remorse like he was the one somehow responsible for all of this.

I took another step backward and my feet kept going as my calves burned with the urge to run away from what I had done. “I won’t blame either of you if you want to leave. I don’t expect you to stay here and do anything for me. I certainly don’t expect you to stick around here and risk your lives for me.” I’d never expect that of them and certainly not after what I had done to them. “I think I…I think I’d actually prefer it,” I mused quietly as I continued backing away toward the hallway.

“Angel, you don’t have to do this,” said Dominic as he tried to take a step toward me, but again, I retreated. His jaw tensed. “Do not spite your heart to spare my feelings.”

“That’s not what I’m doing.”

“Yes, it is,” he answered, as though positively certain of it. As though he had no clue how far from the truth he had actually strayed. “He’s your soulmate.”

My gaze flicked to Trace. “I know that.” Every atom in my being knew that.

“Then you know that he’s the one you’re supposed to be with,” he said as he grabbed my wrist and stopped me from going any further out the room. His eyes trained on mine and my body instantly heated as though warm honey were spreading through my insides. “He’ll make you happy, angel. I know that he will.”

Trace’s expression contorted with confusion, as though he was unable to make sense of the words coming out of Dominic’s mouth. But that was because he didn’t know the real Dominic or the lengths he would go to in his quest to make me happy. He didn’t know him the way I knew him. No one did.

“Do not deny yourself a chance at a good life because you feel bad for me,” he went on more urgently as though my happy ending were boarding the train as we spoke, and I had mere seconds to decide my fate. “Don’t taint what we had by making it the reason you end up alone.”

“That’s not what I’m doing.”

“Then take the damn stars, angel.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Why not?” he asked aghast.

How could he ask me that? How could he not know that the stars didn’t even exist without him. They were my stars. Both of them. They were the only things that lit up the sky for me at night. The only things that mattered.

More tears rained down as I shook my head, unable to produce the words I was sure were already engraved in my eyes, just as they were on my soul.

Maybe it was better like this; better if I didn’t say anything at all. Maybe it would be easier for him to let me go if he didn’t know just how deeply I was in love with him.

I tried to turn and run again, to leave it all in the air where nothing was cemented but the fact that it was over, but he clutched onto my wrist harder, keeping me right where I was.

“You owe me nothing, angel. What you have given me—loving me despite all my faults and unforgivable deeds, you have already given me more love than I have ever known in my life. I could die tomorrow with nothing other than that and I would die happy because at least I’d know I wasn’t all bad. That I wasn’t all monster. I’d know that somehow along the way, I had earned the love of an Angel, and I would make that be enough for me. On the stars, I would. But I cannot do that unless I know you’re okay.”

My heart sank out of my chest like an anchor as I fought the urge to crash into his arms and never leave. To hold onto him so tightly and endlessly that they would need the jaws of life just to pry me away from him. I wanted so badly to keep being that person for him, to spend my life showing him all the ways he was worthy of love and every other good thing in this world.

And I wanted to be that for Trace too. I wanted to be the best version of myself and grow by his side. To become the woman his future-self had known me to be. To be the other half of his soul.

But I couldn’t be those things for either of them no matter how much I wished it so.

So, I wasn’t okay, and I was never going to be okay with any of this, but it didn’t change a damn thing. Because this wasn’t about me. It was about them. It was about ensuring they would have all the things I wasn’t able to give them. It was about making sure that one day they would finally understand that it was never because I didn’t love them enough to stay, but because I loved them enough to set them free.

“If you think I can just ride off into the sunset with Trace any more than I could ride off with you then you don’t know me at all.” I pulled my hand free and stepped back, my gaze moving effortlessly between him and Trace just the way it always had. “It’s like choosing between water and the air I breathe. You could force me to do it, you can even make the choice for me, but I’d still only ever be dying without the other one.”

In some ways, doing that to them was even worse than what I’d been doing up until now. Condemning them to spend the rest of their life with someone who was only ever half of a whole, who was perpetually haunted by the love they’d left behind. Reminding them each and every day that they alone couldn’t fulfill me, that they couldn’t fill the void that the other one had left. That was a wound that would never heal no matter how many times it scabbed over, and I’d never willingly inflict that on either of them.

“Is that what you want? Is that the life you want to live with me?” I asked neither one in particular because I already knew the answer to that. No one in their right mind would want to live that kind of life. It would chip away at their very soul until theirs was as tattered and ruined as mine was.

And I wouldn’t do that to them. Giving them up was the only way to save them from that unmendable ruin. It was the most selfless thing I could do for them. My one grand gesture of love.

I already knew what the future held for me if I ever made it out of this town in one piece. I was the Daughter of Hades, enemy of The Order, and friend to no one, cursed to wander through life with a target on my back and an empty heart, and I was okay with that if it meant they would be spared.

“I know you can’t see it now,” I said as I wiped at my tear-soaked cheeks and lifted my chin, “but I’m doing this for you. For both of you. And one day when you both have all the things you deserve and I’m nothing but the ghost of a bad memory, you’ll understand why I did it and you’ll know. You’ll know .”

I turned to leave the room without sparing a glance back in their direction, feeling the fine cracks inside my heart splintering outward with every step I took away from them and forcing my feet to keep moving despite it. And when they tried to come after me, I steeled my heart and called on my magic, blasting it out of me with the sorrow of a thousand broken hearts and into the beautiful boys I loved.

Their movements halted mid-step, perfectly frozen in place, and I left them that way, pausing only to briefly memorize the gutted looks on their faces before running upstairs to my bedroom and locking the door behind myself.

I vowed never to forget how they looked in that moment.

To never forget what my brand of love had done to them.

In the shrouded darkness of my room, I slid to the floor and buried my face in my hands, listening on as my heart continued to crack and break apart in my chest. It would have been easier to ignore it—to distract myself with something that crowded everything in my mind, but instead, I forced myself to listen to every note of heartache, refusing to let myself go numb to it even when my body begged for relief.

It was better like that. Better to rip it all off like a bandage and let the shattered pieces drop where they may. The sooner my heart died, the sooner I could rise again as something else. Something that could live with the gaping hole in her chest. Something so cold and so hard that she wouldn’t need air or water to exist at all.