Page 7 of Irreverent (The Marked Saga #7)

A gentle rain rapped against the windows as I sat on the sofa in Trace’s living room, anxiously picking at my cuticles while he grabbed a couple of beers for us from the kitchen. I wasn’t sure how this conversation was going to go, or where to even begin with it, but in my heart, I knew I was doing the right thing. I couldn’t keep lying to him—hiding the truth about his life. About us. He deserved to know what happened, no matter how bad I came out looking.

The truth hadn’t hurt him thus far and the way I saw it, maybe it was better to just come out and tell him exactly what had happened rather than have him relentlessly tilling around in his brain for the answers.

Donning a fitted white t-shirt as he walked back into the room, he twisted off the cap from both beer bottles and then handed one to me before settling in the armchair opposite of where I was seated. To my relief, the soulmate bond was ever present, comforting me as it softly hummed between us even though we weren’t physically touching. No matter how at odds we were, it was a gentle reminder that we could find a way out of almost anything so long as we just stuck together.

“I’m not sure where to start,”

I said as I took a sip of my beer and then placed the bottle on the coffee table. The drink wasn’t as strong as what I would’ve liked to have this conversation, but it would at least take some of the edge off.

“Start at the beginning,”

he said and while his voice was calm and even, there was a definite detachment about him, almost as though he’d slipped back behind his trusty armor without even meaning to.

“You were right about us having history. About everything really. We were together and in love, and it was serious and beautiful and everything I never knew I needed.”

His eyebrows shot up as though he hadn’t expected me to come right out and admit that.

But it was the truth and there was no backing away from it now. It was owed to him, and I was finally ready to pay the price. “Being with you made me feel safe and protected and loved. You were home to me, and in some other lifetime, some fairytale story book, that might’ve been the beginning of our happily ever after,”

I said, trying not to let the sorrow building at the back of my throat interfere with my words. “But it didn’t work out that way.”

“Because of Dominic?”

he asked, his eyes rife with hurt and disappointment.

“Because of what I am,”

I answered with regret. “Because I’m the Daughter of Hades, and unfortunately, I was one of the last ones to know it.”

I went on to tell him about Engel and how he had kidnapped me and held me captive in order to have access to my blood, all while trying to bond himself to me. I told him how Dominic had been there with me every step of the way, protecting me while he worked on setting me free from the inside. That had it not been for him, I would have faced certain death…or a fate far worse than that.

I explained how my bloodbond with Dominic had come to be and that while it was born out of necessity, it changed the course of my entire life. And I confessed that while he had been outwardly against it from the beginning and viscerally hated Dominic for it, I, on the other hand, had mostly spent my time lying to him and myself about it.

“It was easy to fool myself into believing that the feelings I had for Dominic were solely because of the bloodbond. It shattered your heart when you found out and I wanted nothing more than to stop you from feeling that pain. And so I went along with it, even believed that everything I felt for him was not real. But I know the truth now and deep down, I think we both knew it then too.”

My hands trembled in my lap as I finally spoke my truth. “The things I felt for Dominic had started long before we sealed the bond. If anything, the bond only gave me an outlet to allow myself the space to feel what I had been denying all along.”

The look of devastation on Trace’s face nearly cut my heart in two. I hated admitting this to him—hated even saying it all out loud—but I had carried the lies in my heart for far too long. I couldn’t bear the weight anymore.

“So, all that time, you were just lying to me about how you felt? That you had feelings for me?”

“No,”

I whispered and then shook my head. He still didn’t get it. “That’s the part that makes this so much worse. Because I never stopped loving you throughout that entire time, not for one second. And while my heart may have made room for another, I never once acted on my feelings for Dominic while I was with you. Not until after…”

“After I died,”

he finished, looking shell-shocked from having to utter the word aloud.

I nodded wearily, knowing how hard it was for him to hear the truth but also because I knew that I wasn’t even almost finished yet. “Are you sure you want me to continue?”

This was a lot for anyone to take in, let alone someone who had their memories wiped from existence.

Pumping his jaw muscle, he picked up his beer and nodded. “Yeah, I’m sure,”

he said as he tipped his head back and took a good, long swig. “I need to hear this, Jemma.”

He did need to hear this. And I needed to profess it.

I sucked in a stabilizing breath and went on to tell him how he had come to be Lucifer’s vessel after I’d accidently released the beast from his Hell cage, and then all about the havoc he had inflicted on everything and everyone around us. I told him about his visit to me during a dreamwalk and how he knew what was coming and what needed to be done. And finally, after a few more sips of my own drink, I worked up the courage to tell him about that night at All Saints—the one that fractured my heart and shattered my world into a million unfixable pieces.

He took everything in strides, his sublime blue eyes fixed on me as though I held the key to all the answers he sought. As though I were the key to his past, present, and future. And I supposed in a way I was.

“If there had been another way, I would’ve walked to the end of the earth to find it. But there was no other way and time had run out.”

Warm tears were streaming down my face like a rainfall, and I let them, feeling relief from finally being able to tell him the truth—to uncage all the things I had been keeping locked up inside me.

“A part of me died with you that day, Trace. The part of me that dreamed of a happily ever after. The part of me that wanted to marry you and have a hundred babies with you.”

The tiniest semblance of a smile appeared just then as his protective armor began to fade.

“But I let all of that go the moment I lost you. I had to in order to go on without you. I gave myself over to the darkness then—to the life I was born and bred for—because without you, I couldn’t stand to be in the light anymore. It just hurt too damn much to live there without you,”

I choked out, my words cracking between the pained sobs that wanted to breathe life in this new world.

He watched me closely, his probing blue eyes scrutinizing every fleck on my face as though he were trying to peer into my soul. To reach into me and find all of the things that were hiding there. But he didn’t need to do that—not anymore—because I intended on letting him see me for all that I was and all I had done. Consequences be damned.

“It was only after I lost you that I stopped fighting my feelings for Dominic. I took comfort in his arms and allowed myself to openly love him, and as painful as it is to admit this to you, I don’t regret it because he is the only reason I was able to survive your death. He put breath in my lungs and made me feel alive again. Made me feel whole and strong enough to endure anything, and I gave myself to him completely because I never in my wildest dreams imagined that I’d be having this conversation with you. That I would come back from my summer away and find you standing there across the parking lot, living and breathing as though the worst moment of my life had never happened.”

His expression pinched with what looked like sympathy, as though he were imagining himself in my position. But he could never fathom it. Not really. Not unless he lived through it himself.

“But it happened. You were there, alive, and in that moment, I realized that as lucky as I was to be seeing you again, to be able to touch you and feel you and have you back in my life, I was also utterly and completely screwed. Because I was in love with both of you and nothing I could do or say to myself was ever going to change that.”

He exhaled a long, heavy breath of air as he tried to digest the monumental load of information I’d just dumped on him. I studied him for a while, trying to gauge how he had taken it all, but his fixed expression gave nothing away.

“So, that’s pretty much everything,”

I said quietly, still watching him for any signs of a total breakdown, praying to every god in the sky that I had done the right thing tonight.

“That’s…a lot to take in,”

he said and then sagged back in his chair, pushing his thighs apart as he watched me.

I nodded, knowing that it was. “Does it make you hate me more or less?”

I asked, hopeful that it was the latter.

He shook his head as he rubbed his fingers along his jawline. “I don’t hate you, Jemma.”

My heart thumped with hope.

Lifting off the sofa, I walked around the coffee table and then sat down on it in front of him, needing to look him in the eyes for what came next. “I’m sorry I lied to you, Trace. I never meant for you to get hurt,”

I said as I gently touched his knee. “This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be.”

His jaw clenched as the sweet vibration of our soulmate bond buzzed between us and I knew he felt it too.

“I love you, Trace. I loved you then and I love you now. You have to know that by now.”

“But you love Dominic too,”

he said quietly, and I wasn’t sure if it was a statement or a question.

“Yeah. I do,”

I answered honestly and then withdrew my hand from his leg. It didn’t feel right touching him while I was expressing the fact that I was also in love with someone else.

The silence between us lingered in the air like a third wheel. I wasn’t sure what he was thinking just then. Was he angry with me? Disgusted? Disappointed? Or maybe those were just my own emotions mirroring back to me. How the heck had this happened? How had I fallen so madly and completely in love with two separate people? And if I couldn’t make sense of it or understand how that was even possible, how the hell could I ever expect him to?

“Are you still in love with me?”

he asked after a brief pause, almost as though he had needed to work up the courage to ask me the question.

My eyes shot up to his. “Completely.”

There was no other way to answer that question except with the absolute truth.

His jaw relaxed as relief seeped into his expression. Unfortunately, it was short lived. “But you’re in love with him too,”

he surmised, apparently still trying to wrap his head around all of this.

I nodded regretfully because I didn’t feel proud admitting that. It had never been what I wanted to happen, but it was the truth. My truth. And he deserved to know where I stood, no matter how bad I came out looking. “I never meant to fall for both of you, Trace. It wasn’t intentional. It just…happened, and as much as it hurts to admit it, I can’t keep lying to you or myself anymore.”

His dimples pressed in as he worked his jaw muscle again.

“If you hate me because of it or don’t want to see me anymore, I…”

I swallowed the sadness at the back of my throat and composed myself as best as I could. “I would understand,” I said, and truly, I would. I wouldn’t like it, of course, but I would try my best to respect it if that was what he wanted.

A shadow danced along the edge of his face as his pristine blue eyes lifted to meet my broken gaze. “I don’t hate you, Jemma. I could never hate you.”

My heart swelled at his words as I remembered the last time he had said that to me. Still, a part of me did not want to let myself fully believe it. To accept the free pass into my heart. Because while I’d done some pretty shitty things in my life, being in love with two men? Well, that had to take the cake. No matter what I did, no matter how much I didn’t want it to be so, someone was going to have their heart broken, irreparably.

And it would be all my fault.

“Never say never,”

I warned him, knowing that as much as he may have meant that now, people had a habit of changing their minds, especially when faced with the difficult reality of an impossible situation. Would he still mean that after he had time to process all of this? What about if I chose Dominic over him? Or walked away from both of them? I highly doubted it.

But Trace didn’t.

He met my eyes with an intensity that all but set my skin on fire. “I could never hate you,”

he repeated and this time, I almost believed him.

“Because we’re soulmates?”

I asked, wondering if that was the reason he was so sure of himself.

“That’s a part of it, yeah,”

he said as he picked up his beer and took another swig. His Adam’s apple dipped as he swallowed down the ale. “But it’s not the only reason.”

I waited for him to elaborate, to tell me why he was always so sure about that, about us, but he offered nothing more. Instead, he set the bottle back on the coffee table beside my thigh and then met my eyes. His dimples made a brief appearance as his gaze dropped to my mouth before skirting away from me altogether.

I couldn’t help but feel cold without the heat from his eyes on me.

“Is there anything you want to say to me?”

I asked him, feeling as though I could almost see the hundreds of thoughts and questions swirling behind those soulful eyes of his.

“Yeah,”

he said and looked back at me. A small line formed between his brows as he frowned. “But I’m going to need some time to sort through all of this first.”

I ducked my chin in a nod and tried to hide the disappointment from my face. Not that I had any right to feel disappointed. I mean, what did I expect anyway? For him to throw his arms in the air and say none of that mattered? That the fact that I was also in love with someone else was no big deal? Of course, he needed time to sort through everything, and frankly, he deserved to have it.

Guessing that it was my cue to leave, I started to get up off his coffee table and then paused, looking back at him thoughtfully. “Are you going to be okay?”

His jaw tensed as he nodded. “I’m working on it.”

I chewed the inside of my cheek, not liking his answer or the overwhelmed look on his face. “Do you want me to spend the night with you?”

I blurted out abruptly.

He arched his brow at me, and my cheeks immediately reddened upon realizing how that sounded.

“I mean, not for that. I wasn’t asking to like, sleep with you or anything.”

“Are you sure?”

he asked, his baritone voice vibrating under my skin. “Because it kind of sounded like you were.”

My entire face flushed with burning heat as though lava were spewing out from my pores.

“Relax.”

His lip curved into a lopsided smirk at my reaction. “I’m just kidding.”

“Right. I knew that. Obviously.”

I tried to laugh away my mortification but failed miserably. Must. Change. Topic. Now. “Anyway, I just meant that I could stay over if you wanted me to. Ben told me you had another migraine today and I—”

“It’s just a headache, Jemma,”

he cut in over me, his tone even and unbothered. “I get them all the time.”

“I know, but we have to be careful. The wall around your memories is still really—”

“Fragile, I know. I get it. Ben already gave me the whole speech,”

he said and then polished off the rest of his beer before setting it down on the table. “Listen, it’s nothing I haven’t felt before, okay? But I promise, if the pain gets to be too much or something short-circuits in my head, you’ll be the first to know,” he said jokingly and then cracked another wry smile at me. But I couldn’t return the gesture.

There was nothing funny about this—about the possibility of all hell breaking loose in his mind. And the fact that we had next to zero information regarding the risks, the chances of it happening, or the warning signs to look out for made it that much harder to stomach. It was like being stuck in a permanent state of waiting for the other shoe to drop, and I hated every second of it.

The only slither of hope I had left was that perhaps now that he knew the truth, now that he knew the whole story, he would stop digging around in his mind in search of answers.

Maybe now he would finally leave well enough alone.

Maybe.