Page 34 of Illusory (The Marked Saga #8)
As soon as I’d finished my training session with Gabriel, I immediately tucked tail and scurried back off to my room with the excuse of needing to catch up on my homework, but the truth was, my poorly constructed facade was already beginning to show cracks.
While it was easier to avoid my feelings when I kept myself busy, even mentally running only worked for so long before you realized you really weren’t getting anywhere at all.
Stupidly, I had thought that I was prepared for how impossibly difficult all of this was going to be, but it turned out that I hadn’t even glimpsed the tip of the iceberg. Little did I know that dealing with my own grief over losing them was going to pale in comparison to the agony of being forced to witness theirs —to see the hurt and sadness and doubt in their own eyes every time I looked at them.
I wasn’t sure how much more of it I could take before I completely broke apart.
The longer I tried to distract myself through the pain, the harder it became to take a breath without feeling like I was choking on it, and by the time afternoon rolled around, holding back the geyser of tears that were dying to break free from the moment I’d opened my eyes had become an undoable job in and of itself.
A gentle knock rapped at my door, and I knew it was Trace even before he’d said a word. I could feel our bond through the door, thrumming through my bloodstream with blanket promises of happily ever after and forever. Promises that would make the pain go away, but that I knew I could never accept again.
“Please go, Trace,” I said, sniffling as I sat on the floor with my back against the locked door and my knees tucked into my chest. Seeing Trace was the last thing I needed when I was already on the cusp of giving up on all of it.
“I can’t do that,” he said, his baritone voice grazing against my skin like a caress. “Please talk to me, Jemma.”
“There’s nothing to talk about.” I shook my head, my face soaked and splotchy from the hundreds of tears I’d already cried. “Don’t make this any harder than it already is, Trace. Please just go .”
There was a brief pause of silence on the other side and for a second, I wondered if he’d done what I asked and left, and then he spoke again.
“I need to see you, Jemma. I need to—look, I’m sorry, but I can’t talk to you like this,” he said and before I could ask him what he was apologizing for, he was already materializing a couple of feet in front of me, his form slowly solidifying as I watched him through wet, blurry eyes.
“Goddammit, Trace,” I said as I frantically wiped away at my cheeks, not wanting him to see me in this sad, sorry state. “You can’t just port in here whenever you feel like it.”
“I know.” He pushed his hands through his hair and then frowned, his eyes and expression crestfallen as he took me in, crumpled on the floor like an old wet sock. “I’m sorry.”
The fact that he was apologizing to me after all that I’d done to him was enough to make me wish the Angel’s of Justice would just pulverize me right where I sat. It was the least I deserved.
God, this was exactly why I had to end things with him. All I’d ever done was find new and disgraceful ways to hurt him. What good was I to him anyway?
“Please talk to me, Jemma. I’m fucking begging you.”
“Talk to you about what, Trace? What’s the point? There’s nothing left to say,” I said shaking my head at the hopelessness of it all.
“There’s everything left to say.”
A ball formed in my throat, making it difficult for me to swallow down the sob that was trying to scream its way out of me. This would be so much easier if he could just hate me for what I did. But he didn’t. His heart was still beating in tune with mine and every inch of my body was acutely aware of it.
All I wanted to do was crawl over to him and kneel at his feet like the Adonis he was. To wipe his memory of every bad thing I did to him and find a way to be enough—to devote myself to him the way he deserved. I wanted it so fucking badly. But I knew I couldn’t do any of that and the longer I stayed in his presence like this, the harder it would be for me to resist what every fiber of my being intrinsically wanted.
“You can’t just say what you said and expect that to be the end of it.”
I blinked at him, confused, because that was exactly what I expected. I mean, I hadn’t had very many boyfriends outside of Dominic and Trace, but I was pretty sure that was the way breakup speeches generally went.
“Don’t I get to have a say in it?” he pressed.
“I…I don’t think that’s the way it works,” I said and dropped my head. “What are you going to say, Trace? You want to convince me I made the wrong choice?”
“Yeah. I do,” he said not even bothering to deny it.
Crevices cracked along the ice in my heart, threatening to make an opening for him.
“I can’t do this with you right now,” I said, though if I were being honest with myself, I wasn’t sure there would ever be a time I could have that conversation with him. The way he was looking at me—the way my heart and soul were calling out for him—I wasn’t sure I’d be able to turn him down. “You have to leave. You’re not supposed to be alone in here with me like this,” I added, hoping it would deter him from trying to continue this as I quickly wrangled myself back up to my feet to unlock the door.
The sooner I put space between us, the sooner I could go back to calcifying my heart to the both of them.
“You’re my soulmate,” he murmured, and I froze, my back turned to him and my hand on the door handle, grasping but not turning. “You can’t just walk away from that—from me .” He stepped behind me, his hands coming up to my waist and then wrapping around me so that I was cradled in his arms, my back pressed against his chest.
The soulmate bond sang between us, making my eyes slip shut and my hand drop away from the handle without even meaning to.
Fuck . This was precisely why he couldn’t be in here. I would fold and I couldn’t afford to go backwards. To have to destroy him all over again. We’d only be right back where we started.
“I don’t want to walk away from you,” I said as I slowly turned in his arms, every part of my body pressed up against every part of his. The truth was, all I’d ever wanted to do from the moment I met him was walk to him—to be wherever he was and with him always.
“Then do that ,” he answered back, hearing my thoughts. “That’s all I want, Jemma. Just tell me how to fix this. Tell me how to make it better.”
“You can’t make it better, Trace. You didn’t do anything wrong. Not once. Not ever. I’m the one that did this. I’m the one that fucked everything up.”
“Then we’ll figure out a way to un fuck it up. Just don’t push me away. Do anything but that.”
I could feel my resolve yielding, tumbling like flecks of dust as his hand came up to move a strand of hair from my eyes and then sank into my curls to cup the base of my head. Every part of my being stood at attention for him, awakening and humming like a madwoman dancing naked and wildly under the moon.
All I wanted to do was surrender to the bond—to sink all the way into him and lay waste to everything around us. To not think or care or feel anything but this moment.
“We’ll figure it out together ,” he whispered, his mouth inching closer to mine. “Just like we’ve always done.”
In that moment, there was nothing I wanted to do more than that. To feel his lips on mine, to let his kiss and touch and words erase all the hurt that was destroying my body like a cancer.
But… but then what ?
Where would that leave us after the moment passed or tomorrow when I was alone with Dominic and inevitably felt the same exact way with him? Where would that bring us except precisely to the same dead-end spot we were standing in right now?
Trace dropped his head, and my heart sank all the way down to the Hell I’d hailed from. Without even meaning to, I’d done it again. I fucking hurt him again .
I squeezed my eyes shut like the coward I was, unable to face up to the mess I’d made of him even though the gutted look on his face was already seared into my brain.
‘ This is why it has to end, Trace’ , I thought silently, pushing the words to him through our connection. ‘ I’ll only ever hurt you, and in the end, it’ll destroy us both .’
He pressed his forehead against mine and the tears I had been working so hard to restrain began to trickle out from my closed eyes, running freely down my cheeks again.
“How am I supposed to live without you?” he murmured, his words a hushed whisper that somehow echoed in my mind like a bloodcurdling scream. “You might as well just stake me, Jemma. Put me out of my fucking misery because I can’t do this life without you.”
Horrified, my eyes popped open, but he was already gone, leaving me standing in my room alone with my back against the door, my heart in tatters, and the acrid taste of guilt on my tongue.
As much as I wanted to go after him, to find some way to take his pain away, I didn’t know how to do that without giving him more false hope.
So I didn’t move.
Not then, and not for hours afterwards.
Not even when the sun bowed down to the horizon and slipped away into oblivion.