Page 88 of Shadowblood Souls: The Complete Series

Twenty-Two

Riva

I blink at Andreas, totally confused. A soap-opera showdown?

“What are you talking about?”

Andreas gazes steadily back at me, his dark gray eyes stealing my breath. “The characters were always confronting each other and letting out their grievances. A lot of times in places like this.”

The corner of his mouth ticks a little higher.

“I’m sure there are tons of things you could say to me that you’ve held back because…

because that’s who you are. But you can let them out.

You can tell me just how pissed off you are with me.

Yell at me. Slap me. Knee me in the balls.

I deserve all of it. Lay in to me. It’s the best moment I could give you to say your piece. ”

I know exactly the kind of moments he’s talking about. I’ve seen them play out on the TV screen so many times.

Back then, I never dreamed that I’d be in a position where I’d have a similar tirade I could aim at one of my guys.

My gaze flits to the other three men standing around the edges of the room. They’re all following our conversation but without any sign of considering intervening.

Andreas clears his throat. “They should hear this too. I’m not going to hide how badly I screwed up.”

He sinks down onto his knees in front of me, so that I’m looking down at him rather than the reverse. My throat constricts.

There is so much pain and anger still churning inside me. The sense of betrayal aches like a wound that’s never properly healed.

Maybe I do need this.

“You lied to me,” I say in a rasp, trying out the accusation.

Andreas nods. “I did, and I shouldn’t have.”

He doesn’t let his gaze waver from mine. Tears prickle behind my eyes.

My voice rises. “You pretended that you cared about me. You made me believe that I could trust you. And the whole time you were waiting for me to give away some awful secret for you to report back to the other guys.”

My hands clench. I don’t want to hit him, not even in anger.

I have none of the same qualms about shouting. It feels good hurling the complaints at him—a release without the nauseating horror I’m capable of at full rage.

The flesh-rending kind of shriek doesn’t prod at me at all. The monster inside me knows this anger isn’t about dealing out hurt but holding my own up as a banner.

“You came to me and acted so sweet. You let me open up to you completely—we shared something I’d never shared with anyone —and the whole time—it never would have happened—I never would have let you even kiss me if I’d had any idea why you’d been nice to me!”

“It’s the shittiest thing I’ve ever done to anyone,” Andreas says, his voice as strained as his agonized face. “I’m not going to make any excuses. I was so fucking wrong, and I wish I could go back and pummel some sense into me.”

But as the words come out, I realize that I want more. I don’t want him to justify what he did, but I need some kind of explanation.

“Why?” I say, abruptly choking up. “Why would you do that to me, after everything we’d been through before, after— How could you treat me like that?”

Andreas tenses. “Riva, I don’t even want to try to say it makes sense?—”

“But it did,” I break in. “When it was happening, you thought you were right. Make me understand.”

The last sentence reverberates through the air with the firmness of a command.

A shadow crosses Andreas’s face, but he keeps gazing up at me. “I—I don’t know if you’ll understand. But I can tell you everything along the way.”

I set my hands on my hips, the smooth fabric crinkling under my fingers. Resolve steadies me. “Fine. Do that. You’re always telling stories about things from the past—make this one of them.”

Andreas stares at me for a moment. Then he inhales slowly.

“You already saw how it started. The video the guardians showed us, making it seem like you knew Griffin would be killed, like you’d made a deal with them.”

“The one they faked.”

“We didn’t know that. We should have, but we were freaked out and we’d just watched Griffin die and you never came back…

They were always reminding us how you’d turned on us, rubbing salt into the wound, and with everything else they put us through, there wasn’t a whole lot of time to step back and really think. ”

Andreas tears his eyes away from me for a second before dragging them back.

“There were times when I wondered if it could really be true. But I thought if they’d made it up somehow, then you had to be dead too.

Maybe some part of me would rather think you’d betrayed us but were still living out there somewhere than that you were gone forever. ”

The raw note in his voice makes my eyes burn hotter. “And then I did come back. I came back to save you.”

“I don’t know how to explain it,” Andreas says, more ragged by the second.

“I’d spent four years believing you were a traitor.

You seemed distant. I could tell there was something you weren’t telling us, even after you started opening up.

I only made the deal with Jacob because the alternative was not even trying to find out what was true—and it was something I could do.

A way I could make sure the other guys were safe.

I’ve been trying so hard for so long to keep everyone from falling apart… ”

He trails off.

I resist the urge to grit my teeth. “You let me fall apart.”

“I didn’t mean to. I didn’t— the more time I spent with you, the more I was convinced that you were telling the truth, that you’d come to break us out and you wanted to protect us.

But I couldn’t get the other guys to believe it.

And there was still that thing you were keeping quiet about…

I had no idea it was only that you’d kissed Griffin. ”

I remember with a queasy lurch of my gut how nervous I was when I finally admitted that to him.

But he’d already known all along from the video. That much of the recording was real.

“I did tell you,” I said. “When I thought I could trust you.”

“And I was so relieved it wasn’t anything else. That you were exactly the woman you’d always been. I thought everything was going to be okay.”

A shudder runs through my body. “You thought it was okay to fuck me.”

Andreas can’t suppress his wince at my harsh phrasing. His head droops.

“You were still the woman I’d always loved, and you loved me too, and when I was wrapped up in the moment, it felt like that was all that mattered.

And after I came out of the daze, all that seemed to matter next was making sure the other guys knew we’d been wrong so I could fix everything else.

I didn’t know you’d follow me—that you’d hear… ”

“Were you ever going to tell me if I hadn’t?” I have to ask.

“Yes,” Andreas says hoarsely. “I’d already realized I was going to have to while I was walking upstairs to talk to the guys. But it was more important to deal with them first. I guess I don’t have any proof that I definitely would have in the end.”

He raises his head again and meets my eyes.

“No matter what I do to make up for it, I know there’s no way to simply fix how I screwed things up.

But I will keep trying. For the rest of our lives, if that’s what it takes.

I’ll go to my grave trying and not regret anything but the fact that I fucked up so horribly in the first place.

I’ve loved you my whole life so far, and I’ll love you for the rest of it, even if you spend the rest of yours hating me. ”

The truth of those words rings through his voice—and resonates through the mark on my chest. He means it, every bit of that statement.

And I don’t hate him. Even at my angriest and most hurt, I’ve never hated him.

I’m not sure I’m even angry at him anymore after his confession. I can follow the road he went down without all that much difficulty.

The guardians screwed all of us over. They messed with our heads and battered our spirits.

They broke us in so many ways and put together the pieces badly.

How many mistakes have I made?

All he wanted to know was the truth. So he could be sure, for the guys he’d do anything to protect.

I can understand that.

But even as my shoulders start to relax, a thread of tension remains wound around my stomach. That echo of his voice wavers through my mind again.

The whole reason I started getting cozy with her was so she’d open up…

I have to know the whole truth too.

“Okay,” I said quietly. “I want one more thing.”

“Name it.”

“I want you to show me your memory of everything that happened from when you left me in the farmhouse to when I caught you talking with Jacob.”

A flicker of surprise races through Andreas’s expression. Before he can speak, Jacob lets out a rough sound from where he’s standing near the snack table.

My attention jerks to the other guy. “What?” A prickle of renewed irritation climbs my spine. “Are you worried it’ll make you look even worse?”

Jacob swipes his hand across his mouth. His face hardens, but he answers evenly enough.

“I know it will. But that’s my fault.”

At least he can admit that much.

I tug my gaze back to Andreas. He nods. “Whenever you’re ready.”

Last time, when he showed me what they experienced after our first escape attempt, he suggested I sit down first. I lower myself to the floor and brace my hands on either side of me.

“Go ahead.”

Drey’s eyes shine crimson, and all at once I’m back in the basement.

I’m back, but not as myself. My silver-steaked hair, the stuff that made Griffin call me Moonbeam, unfurls across a blanket beneath my new view.

It’s Andreas’s eyes I’m looking through this time. Andreas’s arms wrapped around a much slimmer, smaller body than his own.

Andreas’s body tensing in the moment before he tells me he needs to go talk to Jacob.

I think I know why he started the memory here. Because while I can’t read his emotions in the memory, I can feel the way he resisted releasing his hold on me.

He didn’t want to let me go. He didn’t want to leave me.