Page 6 of Irreverent (The Marked Saga #7)

It was nearly one o’clock in the morning by the time I pulled into Trace’s driveway. A gentle rain peppered my shoulders as I climbed out of my car and walked over to Ben who had been waiting outside to meet with me. Not only had he been an amazing friend to Trace by keeping a close eye on him and being there for him when he needed a friend the most, but he had also been keeping me in the loop as my one and only connection to Trace since he’d frozen me out Friday.

Not that I blamed Trace for ghosting me. I probably would’ve done the same thing had the situation been reversed.

“Sorry for pulling you out of your house so late,”

said Ben as I walked across the fog-kissed driveway to meet him where he stood. “I figured you’d want to know what’s going on right away.”

He’d figured right.

“When did this last headache start?”

I asked as I tucked my hair behind my ear and searched his brown eyes for clues as to the level of worry I should be feeling.

“I don’t know.”

He ran a hand over his buzzed hair, flicking off some of the rain as he thought about it. “Maybe an hour ago?”

“And you really think they’re happening because he’s trying to remember things on purpose?”

He nodded. “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that they happen every time he starts asking serious questions or fishing around for details about the past.”

I had to admit, it kind of made sense. The magical wall around his memories was just that—a simple barrier keeping the past out of his consciousness. But if he was constantly poking around in there and scratching at it, trying to dig up buried details and repressed memoires, I imagined it would only make that wall more and more unstable until it eventually came crashing down altogether. Maybe telling him the truth might finally ease his desperate need to fill in the missing pieces. Maybe it was exactly what he needed to finally leave the damn wall alone.

“What do I do here, Ben?”

I asked, hugging my arms for warmth. The way I saw it, I had two choices: Either I took the risk of continuing to lie to him and hope that his incessant poking around wouldn’t eventually backfire and break the wall around his mind, or I take the other road and tell him the truth in the hopes that he would leave the whole thing alone. “I feel like I’m between a rock and a hard place right now.”

“Yeah, I don’t envy you,”

he said as he twisted his piercing at the top of his ear.

“What would you do if it were up to you? Would you tell him the whole truth?”

“Honestly? It’s what I’ve wanted to do for months now,”

he admitted, looking bashful that he hadn’t bothered to mention this before now. “Nikki did this to him on purpose, Jem—I’m sure of it. She wiped you from his memory because that’s the only way in Hades she’d have a chance with him. That right there is fact, so remind me again why the fuck we’re all still keeping up this charade for her in the first place?”

I shook my head because I didn’t have the slightest idea either. There had been a reason but somewhere along the way, I had lost sight of it altogether. There had been so many unknown variables in the beginning, and when I coupled that in with what Dominic’s Necromancer friend had said, it seemed like the best thing to do for him at the time. The safest bet.

But I wasn’t so sure anymore. Trace had been slowly remembering things for weeks and he hadn’t so much as splintered let alone snapped. Not to mention Nikki had blatantly admitted to erasing me from his memory on purpose. For all we knew, she was lying about the rest of it too, using our fears against us in order to keep us complicit in the major mind-fuck she had bestowed on him.

“I wish I could help you, Jem. Just know that whatever you decide to do, I’ll back you up,”

he said, and somehow, those simple words made the impossible weight I was carrying just a little more bearable.

“You’re a good friend, Ben. Not just to Trace but to me too. I appreciate you.”

“Aw, man.”

His cheeks brightened as he grinned back at me. “Don’t go getting all soft on me now,” he said and then teasingly tussled my hair before pulling me into a bear hug. “Good luck in there, alright? I’ll see ya tomorrow.”

“Yeah. See you tomorrow.”

I waited a few moments for Ben to disappear down the street and then made my way up the front steps, pausing in front of the massive arched front door. Even though I had my own key, it didn’t quite feel right using it while Trace was still not speaking to me, so I didn’t. Instead, I pulled in a steadying breath and reached forward to ring the bell.

The sound of my heart knocking against my chest seemed to go on forever.

“What the fuck did you forget this time?”

asked Trace from the other side of the door before he swung it open and then grimaced upon seeing that it was me standing there and not his best friend. “Jemma? What are you doing here?” he asked, his gaze flicking over me in assessment. Though his expression and demeanor were meant to come off hard and guarded, there was an unmistakable note of concern riding his voice.

My eyes veered to his bare-naked chest and then shot right back up again. Nope. Not here for that. Need to stay focused. “Ben called me,”

I said and then cleared my throat. “I just wanted to make sure you were—”

“I’m fine,”

he cut in icily and then crossed his arms as he leaned his shoulder into the door jamb. “Is that it?”

Ouch. I winced at his frosty words as they blew back onto me. “No, that’s not it.”

He raised his dark eyebrows, waiting.

Okay, clearly, he was still pissed off at me. Like very pissed off. “You won’t answer any of my calls or texts.”

“I’m surprised you noticed,”

he said, his flat tone giving absolutely nothing away. “I thought you’d be too busy now that you have your boyfriend shackled up in your basement.”

I flinched so hard I nearly gave myself whiplash. How the hell did he know about that?

He snorted as he watched me bumble around trying to think of something to say to that. “I guess I wasn’t supposed to know about that either, huh?”

Double ouch. “That’s not fair, Trace. And he’s not my boyfriend,”

I muttered out the last part; a technicality that was completely irrelevant at this point.

His jaw tensed but he didn’t say anything.

“Look, I know this whole thing looks really bad—I know I look really bad, but it’s not what you think. I mean, it is, but it isn’t.”

I inwardly kicked myself for barely making any sense in my supposed defense.

“Well, which one is it?”

he asked evenly.

I pinched the bridge of my nose as I tried to stifle a sob that suddenly wanted to explode from my chest. “It’s hard to explain. There’s so much you don’t know—”

“And who’s fault is that?”

he cut in angrily as my words reminded him of all the things he didn’t know. Of all the things I had willfully kept from him.

“Technically? It’s Nikki’s fault!”

I said, throwing that bitch right under the bus. “She’s the one that brought you back with only half your memories. She’s the one that erased me from your life!”

“But you’re the one that I love and trusted,”

he retorted soberly, his impenetrable wall weakening for just a moment to expose what was really hiding behind it. Disappointment and absolute heartbreak.

Nikki might’ve broken his mind, but I broke his fucking heart and the realization nearly split my soul in two.

My eyes strained with the burn of unsung tears. “They told me it wasn’t safe to tell you the truth—that I had to keep the past hidden from you. I was just doing what I thought was right at the time, and you know, Trace? You would have done the same exact thing. You wouldn’t have taken the risk if it meant I could get hurt.”

He didn’t say anything to that, and for a moment, I felt as though maybe I were getting somewhere with him. Where that somewhere was, though, I had no idea, but at least he wasn’t glaring at me anymore.

“If it’s any consolation, I was against lying to you from the start and I made that clear to everyone. I just wasn’t sure if telling you the truth would do more damage than good and I wasn’t willing to take that risk without knowing for sure. But I never meant to hurt you like this. Not ever.”

“Then tell me the truth now, Jemma,”

he said, his blue eyes running rampant all over my face as though he could find the truth right there on my skin, buried amid my rain-slicked features. “If you really mean what you said, tell me what the fuck happened to me—what happened with us,” he pleaded desperately, and suddenly, all I wanted to do was reach out and hold him in my arms as I openly confessed every sin I’d ever committed.

I’d hated lying to him then, and I hated it even more now. I’d only done what I thought was right—what all of us thought was the right thing, but it was clear to me now that the lies were hurting him more than the truth ever could, and I was so done with it.

“Okay,”

I finally agreed, my voice a hoarse, ragged whisper of acquiescence. “I’ll tell you everything.”