Page 57 of Severed Heart (The Ravenhood Legacy #2)

I prepare myself for whatever is coming as dread fills me head to toe. She glances out of the window, speaking as if we’re chatting about the weather, even as she drops bombs.

“So, my own papa decided that my virtue— that my worth—was worth a spoon of heroin.”

“Jesus Christ,” I utter, cupping my jaw.

“My consolation is that they killed him for not getting to collect his bet .” She points to herself. “I’m a bad bet, Soldier.”

Both rage and devastation war within me as I step forward, and she steps back twice as far.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!

“I can still hear Matis’s pathetic fucking cries as his old army friend ripped me from my papa’s arms to save me from being his sacrifice. I can hear love the fucking liar begging me, so clearly, to forgive him,” she whispers, holding up her shaking hand. “Reaching for me in the snow.”

Her eyes mist, and I visibly see her getting lost in that day as she speaks again, her next whisper barely audible. “Open your eyes, little flower. Please don’t break my heart.”

“Baby, please ,” I croak, my insides bottoming out.

“Please listen to me, I swear I didn’t mean anything I said in anger.

I swear to God. I was in a really bad place.

Fuck, I know that’s not an excuse, but it’s the truth.

” The need to pull her to me becomes unbearable as her eyes flash briefly with vulnerability.

She’s in there, Jennings. Hold steady.

“That doesn’t change the fact you believe me capable of using a tactic so callous to give you an answer instead of simply speaking one. So, I will make it simple for you. I don’t want your jealous fucking love, Tyler. I don’t want any man’s love for that very reason.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“I do,” she delivers with metal eyes in an emotionless tone. “It’s a ridiculous dream you have.”

“You know I would never hurt you.”

“Do I? Just after that insult, did you not use words to try and hurt me in ways you discovered during our friendship? Preying on my weaknesses?”

“I’ll do anything to make it up to you,” I whisper. “I’m so fucking sorry.”

She approaches and stops just next to me, staring down at the counter, her delivery slightly less icy. “I believe that you believe the words you spoke to me about your affection, but those are your words, your desires, not mine .”

That blow strikes hard, despite how well I was prepped for it and whatever else she decides to deliver.

“We were okay when I left. What happened? Where did your mind go?”

It’s when she slowly lifts her resolute gaze up to mine that I know I underestimated just how not okay we were when I left.

“What happened? You happened.” She shakes her head in refusal. “Or maybe I remembered that I come with a high price, Soldier, and you have the look in your eyes of a buyer .”

“Fine.” I swallow. “You don’t think I was already ready to pay for Matis and Alain? Think again. You couldn’t be more fucking wrong. I’ll pay any price you ask because you’re worth it for me.”

“Any price,” she repeats with a sharp nod.

I swallow, knowing I just fucked up.

“Then I ask for a promise.”

“No.”

“Oui. Forget your foolish idea of us. Treat me as if this never happened.”

“Never. Delphine. Never, it’s far too fucking late for that,” I snap. My hackles rise as her darkness begins to fill the room, and her silver eyes dare me to look inside. I face it—her—head-on.

“Then love has made a liar of you already,” she scoffs. “Have you even considered what I want?”

“You want me. You want us. This is bullshit, and I’m not buying it.”

“ Fool, ” she condemns me. “What I truly want is for you to promise me you will take that look in your eyes, never to bring it back to this house or me. If last night did not satisfy the rest of your curiosity, then your imagination will have to do. It will never happen again.”

“Don’t do this,” I grit out. “You weren’t drunk.”

“I am drunk every night . I do things I regret every day. You are my regret today.”

“You’re lying.”

“ Love is the fucking liar, Soldier, and the sooner you learn that, the better soldier you will be.” She swallows, and I can feel her hesitation before she speaks and levels me with her gaze.

“Love is lying to you right now. Telling you things are so simple between us, but they are not. The truth you don’t want to hear is that you are an eighteen-year-old boy . ”

“You already love me,” I grit out. “Soldier of your heart, your words ,” I remind her.

“I love my nephews with what heart remains, and they are all I have left. I won’t be the disgusting aunt who ruined their childhood and humiliated them by fucking their friends.

I won’t be the laughingstock of this town who looks so desperate she has to fuck a teenage boy .

Go. Do not come back to this house until that look is gone.

Go, soldier. This is the last order I will give you. ”

“I’m not your—”

“Ah, so then you are not my soldier?” she fires next, crossing her arms. “Your words to me. ‘Your soldier, loyally and faithfully yours ’ was another lie?”

I slam my palm on the counter. “This is a truly fucking genius twist, but I’m not that simple-minded, Delphine. You’re being predictable. That’s not the way I fucking meant those words, and you know it.”

“It is the only way those words will ever mean anything to me. Promise me it never happened.”

“Don’t do this.” I bite my lip as I realize just how much power she has over me. How much power I gave her.

She sighs again, snatching the vodka from the counter and unscrewing the cap as I brace myself for the worst.

“Take your crush and go. It’s not welcome here, and if you cannot be adult enough to leave it at home, do not come back.”

“You done?” I ask as her eyes flare.

“You’re right, I’ve been a horrible ... aunt,” she exhales through swollen lips. Lips I spent hours kissing. Lips which kissed me back just as frenzied, just as tenderly. Lips that are currently spewing lies, anything to distance us.

“I didn’t mean it—”

“As strained as it may be,” she continues, “the relationship I have with my nephews now is far different than years ago. I won’t risk that progress for this little affair you have in your head. I’ve brought enough shame to myself, to my family, to Celine’s memory.”

“Liar, you fucking liar,” I snap. “You were there,” I say, resentment clear as I lower my voice, “in every sense of the word. You felt it. You kissed me back. You pulled me closer. That was you, Delphine. You can’t fucking fake that.”

“It’s a delusion, Tyler. What you want to believe about us is not the truth for me .

If you love me as you say you do,” she interjects, her insistent ice eyes steel resolve, “make the promise I am asking for. Forget this ever happened. Treat it— treat me— as if it never did, or my nephews will read the heartbreak on you and have something else to hate me for. They are all I have left.”

“They don’t even fucking see you—” I bite my tongue, knowing I’m playing into her if I strike back with any more insult. Staring back at her, I raise my sword once more.

“I just spent the last two years of my life showering you with every bit of the love I have, proving how kind love can be.”

“And I let you fuck me for it. Do you feel compensated enough”—she tilts her head menacingly—“or entitled to more?”

I gape at her. That blow far too hard-hitting.

Unable to swallow, I find myself unable to react, to say a single fucking word in response.

To back up any promise I made to her or myself.

Instead of fighting, I feel every goddamn word she’s spoken to my core.

In truth, she is showing up for battle. For two men.

Men that aren’t me but might very well take what residence she has left in her heart.

I knew an excuse was coming, and I knew it would be good, but this ... I expected to be able to barter with myself and make allowances, to duel with her on anything. But it’s the severity of her dismissal and the fact that I’m guilty of everything she’s accused me of that has me gridlocked.

The way I acted last night, bursting in in a jealous rage, insulting her, and then touching her before pressing her for more physically.

It sinks in then that I might have let the wants of my heart rule my head far too much.

That I might have misjudged and taken one hellacious overstep assuming she felt the same way.

Thinking back, she’s never once said a single word in agreement with me—of a future between us.

The words of love and devotion, of a future, were all mine.

My heart starts a freefall as I gaze back at her, unable to absorb the blow.

“If I ever made you feel like that,” I rasp out as tears I couldn’t hold if my fucking life depended on it streak my face, “like you owed me, then I have failed you.” I swallow in defeat.

It’s then I see a tiny sliver of remorse snaking through her ice-coated eyes. For the briefest of moments, I glimpse the woman I fell in love with, even as her next words decimate me.

“You didn’t force me, Soldier, and I won’t allow you to think that, but it was a mistake. So I’m asking you now, please, Tyler, never look at me the way you are now again. Push this idea out of your mind and forget it happened. I’m a drunk—”

“Stop,” I wheeze as my heart finally hits the asphalt, the shatter reaching every corner of me, far too many pieces to ever be put back right.

She’s made her decision, and it isn’t me.

A car door sounds, and our eyes snap toward the door and then back to each other as the clock ticks out.

“ Promise me, Tyler. If you truly love me as you say you do, promise me you will never come back to this house with that look in your eyes for me.” Her eyes implore mine, desperation seeping from her every pore. “ Please , Soldier, promise me.”

“It never happened,” I hear myself say while wishing wholeheartedly it was the truth.

Not if this is the payoff of giving so much of yourself to another human being.

Of loving them to the point their wants overshadow your own—of loving another more than yourself.

Ripping my eyes away, within my next breath, I’m closing the sliding door just as Tobias enters through the front.

I catch their muffled greetings before I jump the fence and start at a dead run.

As my feet start to pound the asphalt, I feel the silence in my chest pumping while my mind tries to temper the implosion happening throughout the rest of me, forcing my thinking into a one-eighty.

Into thinking I don’t need a single thing that I thought I couldn’t live without mere seconds ago—my mind’s way of protecting me as I embrace the lifeline.

Delphine once told me the true genius of a strategist lies within the surprise, and hers was far too damning and honest to be completely contrived.

She chose Tobias and Dom when I never even knew I had that competition, that there would be a choice to make between us. I’m not her decision and will never be. My legs fuel me as the roar in my chest intensifies, a lot of that ache feeling like betrayal and broken faith.

The same faith and trust I had in my father. It’s then I realize I foolishly fused it and projected it all into Delphine. I had given her all I had left, and she destroyed me in the same heartless goddamned way. Made me her world like my father had for a time, just to discard as easily.

Cast out.

Not enough.

For either of them.

A mistake. A mistake. A mistake. The word alone holds more power than almost any other she spoke, and it’s no mystery why. I’ve been paying for mistakes dearly for years, ironically so few of them my own.

Agony races on my heels, threatening to catch up as I pound the asphalt, my empty heartbeat pulsing in my ears.

Even as it happens, I begin to shed the weight of their mistakes, brick by brick.

A wall made up of the load I’ve been carrying for people who’ve never shown up to do the same for me, for too fucking long.

Weight created by their selfishness and missteps. My every attempt to help them with their burdens thwarted or overlooked. So, as I shed their collective sins, their burdens, I materialize a wall between myself and their fucking decisions, becoming lighter with every step.

Resigned to let their burdens be their own. To let them lie in their beds, weighed down as they battle their own fucking demons, haunts, and the consequences of their missteps.

Faults I can’t camouflage or fix, and I am losing all desire to with every step that distances me from them, growing lighter and lighter as I go.

As I shed the final brick on one side and lay it on the other, I press through the pain, intent on becoming the man I envisioned—my mission the same.

My mission the only thing within my sights. The only thing that matters.

Now, a homeless soldier, but a soldier just the same.

A soldier with a purpose.

Just after I fix my sight, a mental clarity kicks in before a tunnel envelops me, surrounding my view until I’m hyper-focused.

Racing toward a pinprick I can so clearly see.

It’s then I reach the precipice I’ve been close to reaching for months and finally press past it, finding my freedom with the slow sweep of my eyes.

BLINK. BLACK.

An hour later, I’m a Marine.