Page 247 of Jagged Souls

“They used me as… a thing.” I swallow. “I don’t want to feel like that ever again, and I especially… don’t want to feel like that with my wife.”

She bows forward on a sob, and I move to gather her in my arms, but she darts to the side, away from the wall and back towards the desk.

“How can you love me?” she cries as she stumbles back, putting distance between us with more than just her feet.

I step forward, determined to close it. “Because you’re my little monster.”

“I’m just amonster.”

“No, you’re not.”

“You don’t know what I did!”

“No, but Khalid does.”

She flinches. Her eyes widen. Panic carves deep into her face. Shame. Guilt. Self-disgust.

“He never once thought you were worth leaving. And he’s a very good judge of character on that front because that was his job for a very long time. Deciding who to kill because they became too much of a monster. And knowing who was still worth saving.”

She’s backed up against the desk, and I take that final step towards her. I lift my hand to her face and brush away her tears as she cries.

“I love you, Micha Shadow, because you are worth loving and because I am in love with every part of you. The fire. The courage. The ability to do things that arebadfor the greatergood. I love Rudy for his ability to stay good despite all the bad, to never waver in his damn annoying morals, but I love you for knowing that sometimes, you cannot win by playing by the rules.” I tilt her chin up and look her in the eyes. The redness bothers me, knowing she lost them because of me – even if I didn’t choose them, and I miss the color they were. The defiant brown. The honeyed laughter.

But they are her, and that is enough.

I press a kiss to her forehead, feel her shudder against me. “I love you for being you.” Lowering my head, my heart pounding in every vein and artery inside me, making me feel like I’m about to burst out of my skin, I press my lips to hers.

She trembles, and so do I.

She doesn’t move, and neither do I.

We just stand here, our lips touching and nothing else. Tears streak down our cheeks.

But the gap between us has been closed.

Now we can finally start to heal.

Seventy-Six

HER

Varius no longer sleeps in Maddox’s room.

He sleeps in ours while I watch him.

I thought he didn’t trust me, but in truth, he doesn’t trust himself, and he didn’t want to put his stuff on my shoulders. Not because he thinks I’m weak, but because he still sees his trauma as a burden – just like I do.

So I can’t join him in the bed. I have to sit in a chair across the room, or he can’t drift off. He moves too violently while he sleeps, kicking and lashing out. I want to wake him, but the times I tried just made it worse. Instead, I’ve learned to talk to him. He never seems to wake up knowing what I’ve said, but my voice seems to soothe him enough to calm.

At first, I only read books out loud. Fantasy or sci-fi with no smut at all. Then I started to talk about easy things like Lou being annoying because she wants to drop out of art school so she can become a demon summoner for the SCU. The fuckingSCU. The secret agency that governs sups on Earth and has a prison underwater that makes Alcatraz look like it’s guarded by a rent-a-fence that got pushed down ages ago by a bunch of kids. Then I bring up the idea of moving out of this house. List the pros and cons. Pros being away from the place where so much of my trauma is rooted. Cons being away from his family. I know we both need them.

Even if I haven’t been to see Maddox in a therapist role since that first time three weeks ago, I like seeing him every day as a friend. I like hearing the twins bitch about random things to each other. I like seeing Khalid with – whatever his girl’s name is. Notkirabut something close. Fuck.

I make a note to ask Lou what it is the next time I see her; for some reason, I don’t think Varius remembers either.

And then I talk about my dad. About how I’m avoiding his calls because I’m not the strong assassin he could be proud of. I’m the weakling he always told me I was when he tried to toughen me up so I wouldn’t be an embarrassment.

“When I see him again, I just want us to be on equal footing,” I murmur. I tried so hard to gain his approval when I was a kid, and although I gave that up in my teens, for some stupid reason, I’m back to wanting it.