Page 18 of Irreverent (The Marked Saga #7)

I woke up the next morning feeling achy, tired, and unsatisfied. Not only had I turned my bed into a war zone from all the tossing and turning I did over the sorry state of my relationship with Gabriel, but I was also shaky and weak from not getting my usual dose of Revenant blood at the end of our session last night.

It was a loss that had me feeling a little like a junkie. Not a look I particularly enjoyed.

After showering away the depressing thoughts that plagued my mind, I made my way downstairs to the kitchen where Tessa, my mother and Trace were all seated at the kitchen table eating breakfast. Well, not my mother, obviously. Though chances were, there was half a sack of donor blood in that mug she was sipping on.

How was this my life?

“Is Gabriel still asleep?”

I asked, noting he was missing from the bizzarro family gathering happening in my kitchen.

“Good morning to you too,”

answered Tessa as Trace quietly watched me from his chair. “He left last night,” she continued when all I did was stare at her expectantly. “He texted me saying he had something to take care of and that he would be back later tonight,” she added and then filled her mouth with an overflowing spoonful of cereal.

Disappointment sank my heart.

Because I knew the truth. He didn’t have ‘something’ to take care of. He was trying to get the hell away from me and the bloodbond I was trying to trap him into. What the heck had I done to him? How could I have ever thought this was a good idea? That it wouldn’t end in a complete disaster? I should have known better. I should have known Gabriel better.

I was officially the worst friend in the history of friends.

But…what other choice did I have? There was literally no one else I trusted to do this with. And where would that have left Dominic? Gabriel had always been doomed to be the one and only person I could ask this of. If there had been another viable option, another way around it, I would have tried.

“Hey,”

called Trace, pulling me out of my downward spiral as he walked around the island and joined me where I stood. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, everything’s fine,”

I lied and then tried for a smile. “I just needed to talk to Gabriel about something. How did you sleep?” I asked, changing the topic.

“Like a baby.”

His dimples pressed in as he flashed me a smile.

It was a total sight for sore eyes and almost completely wiped out the guilt I was feeling over what I had been doing last night while he was fast asleep. Almost. “I’m happy to hear that,”

I said genuinely and then covered his hand with mine as he braced it against the kitchen island.

Our soulmate bond immediately took flight, buzzing, and vibrating where our skin touched and then chasing itself through every other part of my body. It was a welcomed, almost healing feeling that always made me feel better no matter how many things were going horribly wrong in my life.

“You want to talk about it?”

asked Trace quietly, hearing my thoughts and knowing that something was off with me.

I swallowed and then pulled my hand away. “Just the usual stuff,”

I said casually, making it seem as trivial as I could. “But there is something I wanted to talk to you about.”

“Okay. Shoot.”

“In private,”

I clarified, glancing over at Jacqueline and Tessa who were both looking at us, clearly eavesdropping.

He followed where my eyes had gone and then nodded before the two of us left the room.

***

I shut the bedroom door behind myself and followed Trace into my room. Obviously, it wasn’t the smartest place to be alone with him. I knew that, but it was pretty much my option what with the mother-and-daughter nosy duo downstairs and my vampire lover incapacitated in the basement.

Again, how the hell was this my life?

“So, what did you want to talk to me about?”

asked Trace as he walked over to the end of my unmade bed and plopped down onto it. Even though his expression appeared relaxed, I knew he was on edge, wondering what this conversation was about and why we needed privacy to have it.

“I need to talk to you about…me. And Dominic,”

I said and then watched as his jawline hardened into stone. “And Gabriel,” I added nervously.

That appeared to throw him right the hell off.

“Okay,”

he said cautiously.

“I know you already know that I’m keeping Dominic incapacitated in my basement, but I’m assuming you probably don’t know the reason why I’m doing that.”

I narrowed my eyes in question.

“Because he shut off his emotions and has been terrorizing you ever since,”

he answered simply, but there was a definite razor-sharp edge to it.

“Well, yeah. But you must know I’m not just planning on keeping him down there indefinitely, right? You understand that I can’t do that, right?”

He nodded, albeit reluctantly. “I figured as much.”

“So, I have a plan to try to bring him back—to get him to turn his emotions back on—and because I’m opting to be one hundred percent honest with you going forward, I want to tell you exactly what I’m doing.”

He straightened his back and shoulders, making himself look several inches taller, even though he was still sitting on my bed. Grabbing the chair tucked in at my desk, I dragged it in front of him and then sat down.

“In order for me to have even the slightest chance of ever getting him to feel real human emotions again, I have to be able to actually spend time with him. To talk to him. One on one.”

His lip twitched as though he already didn’t like the sound of this.

“But I can’t do that because of my bloodbond with him,”

I went on, undeterred. “The minute I take the stake out, he’ll just compel me to set him free, or worse.”

“So, work with a partner,”

suggested Trace, and I was pretty sure I knew who he had in mind for the job. Himself.

“That won’t work. I know Dominic. He’ll never open up to me if he has an audience. It’ll take years before I even start to get anywhere him, if ever at all.”

“So, what’s the plan then?”

he asked, his jaw muscles flexing as he tried to read the answer from my face.

“I need to break the bloodbond.”

He quirked his brow at me. “And how do you plan on doing that?”

he asked with a hint of skepticism because we all knew bloodbonds couldn’t be broken. Or so they said.

“The only way that makes any sense to me.”

I swallowed. “By creating a new bloodbond with someone else.”

Silence pressed into the room like an uninvited guest, and I was sure that he was about to lose his shit at any moment. But then…

“What makes you think that’ll even work?”

he asked instead, his brows creasing as he leaned forward, resting his forearms onto his legs as his gaze bore into me.

“It’s what Dominic did when Engel was trying to bond himself to me to steal the Amulet away. If it worked then, why wouldn’t it work now? I just need to create a stronger bond with someone else.”

It seemed so simple when I laid it out that way, but I knew more than anyone else that it was anything but that.

“And I’m guessing that’s where Gabriel comes in,”

he concluded, not looking particularly pleased by it.

“He’s the only one I trust to do this with, and…pretty much the only hope I have of saving Dominic.”

“And who’s going to save you, Jemma?”

he asked and then let out a sharp breath. “Aren’t you just trading one vampire bond for another?”

“The alternative is doing nothing and letting him go.”

“Exactly,”

he said, nodding his head as though that were a perfectly viable option.

But it wasn’t. “You know I can’t do that, Trace,”

I said, my voice cracking with emotion. “Not when there’s a chance to bring him back from this. I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t at least try.”

His eyes slid shut for a split second and I immediately loathed myself for inflicting that pain on him. As much as I hated having this conversation with him, I knew in my heart that he needed to know the truth. The truth about where I stood and where my heart was. The truth about me and all the pieces that made me up. Including the ugly ones. Because only then could he truly ever know me.

He ran his hand along his jaw as though trying to process everything I’d just dumped on him, and I was sure that at any second, he was going to jump to his feet and walk the hell out on me for good, realizing that I’m not even worth the trouble anymore.

But he didn’t do that.

Instead, he did the last thing I would have ever expected from him. From anyone in his position, really.

“What can I do to help?”

he asked, his gaze softening as my jaw all but hit the floor.

I shook my head, horrified. “Nothing. My god, I would never ask that of you.”

It was bad enough divulging the fact that I was also in love with Dominic and that I was risking everything to try and bring him back to me. I barely expected him to be okay with that part, let alone to offer to help me. Clearly, I’d slipped into some alternate universe where absolutely nothing made sense anymore.

“You told me that Dominic was working with his sire to try to get information to help me, right?”

He pushed the sleeves of his shirt up to his elbows, exposing his Anakim runes as he leaned forward again and interlaced his fingers. “Isn’t that what you said?”

“Yeah, but—”

“So, he probably wouldn’t be in this position if he wasn’t trying to help you save me in the first place. Right?”

“That isn’t why I told you any of that.”

“I know it’s not,”

he said, his dimples making a brief appearance. “But if he can put his hatred for me aside to help you like that, what does it say about me if I can’t do the same?”

I gawked at him, unable to remember a single syllable in the English language. What kind of ever-loving twilight zone had I just entered? What the hell was even going on?!

“Let me help you, Jemma.”

“You don’t have to do that, Trace. I don’t want you to feel like you have to compete with him. This isn’t why I told you any of this.”

This whole thing felt all kinds of wrong.

“I’m not competing with him,”

he said simply and then picked up my chin so that I was looking directly in his eyes. “I love you, Jemma, and I want to be with you, but I don’t want you to pick me because I’m the only man left standing.” Agony spattered across his face like fast pooling blood. “I don’t want to have to wonder if the only reason you’re with me is because Dominic couldn’t be saved.”

My heart shredded into a million pieces. As if it wasn’t bad enough that he had to live with the fact that I was in love with two men, he now had to worry that the only reason I might ‘pick’ him was because Dominic wasn’t an option. I inwardly shrank to the size of a pea as it dawned on me that that was probably the same exact way Dominic had felt when Trace had died, hence why he refused to sleep with me for weeks—even after I had all but thrown myself at him.

I couldn’t imagine how painful this was for either one of them. And to know I was the reason for that pain only made it that much more impossible to swallow.

“I don’t deserve you,”

I said as tears dripped down my cheeks without warning. “All I’ve ever done is hurt you.”

“That’s not even almost true,”

he said as he grabbed my hand and tugged me off my chair and into in his lap.

“Oh, no?”

I tested, looking at him through blurry eyes. “Let’s tally up our history then, shall we?” I said as I knocked down my first finger, ready to spout off the list of all my horrible deeds—starting with the fact that I vanquished him.

“Stop,”

he said and pushed my hands back down to my lap.

“You’re right. We don’t need the list. I’m a horrible fucking person and we both already know it.”

“You’re the farthest thing from that.”

He brushed a tear from my cheek as he angled my face to his. “You’re smart and beautiful and funny and fiercely protective of the people you love. I’d be an idiot to think I was the only person who could see those things in you. That I’d be the only person to fall in love with you because of them.”

More tears were streaming. I didn’t deserve his kind words. Not now. Not after all the things I’d done. “I let myself fall in love with someone else, Trace. How could you ever forgive that?”

He didn’t answer right away, and I thought for sure he was realizing that, in fact, he couldn’t forgive me.

“Did he make you happy?”

he asked softly, his deep voice filling up the space between us like the bassline to my favorite song.

“What?”

I asked, wiping my nose with the back of my hand.

“When you thought I was dead…did he make it easier for you to go on?”

Lord of all lords, what the hell was he asking me?

Was he some kind of masochist?

He smirked, having heard my thoughts. “I promise I’m going somewhere with this,”

he said and then picked up my hand and squeezed it, encouraging me.

Another hot tear raced down my cheek and I nodded regretfully that he had made it easier.

“Okay,”

he said, his voice low and even. “Then I can live with that.”

“What do you mean you can live with that? How?”

I shook my head, desperate to shake away all the chaos and confusion swirling in my head. “I don’t understand.”

“I had a lot of time to think about things last night.”

Letting go of my hand, he reached up and swiped away the salty wetness under my eyes with his thumb. “To ask myself some of the questions I never bothered to ask before.”

I was almost too afraid to ask, but I had to. “Such as?”

“Such as what it means to really love somebody. To love you.”

He smiled at the befuddled look on my face. “I’m not gonna lie. It took me a while to figure it out—to even be able to look past my own hurt and jealousy enough to see it. But once I did, the answer was impossible to miss.”

“Yeah?”

I sniffled, my tears finally slowing down enough to see him properly. “So, what’s the answer then? What does it mean to really love someone?”

His blue eyes fluttered over my face like butterfly kisses. “It means you want the whole fucking world for them. That you would give a million of your own dying breaths just to see them smile. That you’d brave the Seventh Circle of hell if it meant they wouldn’t have to feel any hurt or pain.”

My heart was railing against my chest as though I were about to have a damn aneurism.

“That’s the way I love you, Jemma. The way I want to love you. And if being with Dominic made even one second of your life better, than I’m okay with that. I have to be,”

he said as he ran the back of his fingers down the apple of my cheek. “Because the last thing I’d ever want was for you to be in pain. To suffer because of what you had to do. I would never want that for you.”

Heat crackled against my skin as heart-pounding fireworks detonated right there inside my chest.

It was all I could do to keep from plunging my mouth against his, to throw him down on my bed and show him just how much his words meant to me—to show him just how much I loved him back. But I was too afraid to move. To afraid that if I started, I might never again be able to stop. So, I didn’t.

Not even when Trace’s dimples lit up his face or when he started inching his face closer to mine as though he felt the same unrelenting pull to obliterate the distance between us as I had.

And then a loud knock exploded against the door, causing me to spring off of Trace’s lap as though I’d just blown a fireball out of my ass.

“Put your clothes back on! You’re gonna be late for school,”

scolded Tessa, her footfalls sounding off from somewhere down the hallway.

My face flushed with embarrassment as I glared at her through the closed door. “You’re a real riot, Tessa,”

I yelled back in irritation, but kept the part about her being an even bigger cockblocker to myself.