Page 77 of Tempting the President

Already, my world was blurring, already Kellion’s face was fading and all I could see was Ashton. All I could hear was Ashton. And all I could feel and taste was the pain of his loss.

“Let...me...tell...you...why...I...don’t...want...to...speak.”

KELLION

It was midnight when he stepped out of Aria’s room, his little monster fast asleep. For a moment, Kellion hesitated outside her door, a curiously heavy sense of guilt lodging in his throat, blocking his air passage.

Please, please come before I start hurting myself.

Jacqueline needed him in a way she had never needed him before. What he was doing wasn’t wrong. Leaving Aria couldn’t be wrong, surely – not when it meant saving the only girl he had ever loved?

Pressure built inside of Kellion with every step he took, the pressure growing as the distance between him and Aria yawned. By the time he reached the ground floor, Kellion felt like he was about to explode.

They made me sing.Her words had been halting like they always were, but her eyes had been as dead as her voice.

They made me say things that made people think I was a slut.

She had stared at him without seeing him, spoken like she wasn’t talking about herself, and Kellion had known then that Aria had lost herself in her past.

It was what they wanted. It made them happy the men thought I was willing to do things for them.

Kellion’s eyes involuntarily closed, a self-defense reflex because what Aria had said after that, how she had looked like after that—-

Even when I realized what was happening, I wouldn’t have stopped. Because of him.Aria’s voice had cracked. And when she had looked at him, she was no longer dead, no longer living.

Instead, she was in the hell her parents had created.

They knew I only sang for him, Kellion. They knew.She was crying without the tears, hurting without any physical wounds, and at that moment, Kellion would have given his every possession if he could be in that same hell she was caged in, would have set his own soul on fire if it meant saving hers.

Why did they have to let him down? Why did they have let him die?

Aria had screamed the words out, every word a cry for help.

He was the cutest boy in the world. The cutest. If you had met him, you’d have fallen in love with him, too. When he smiled – it was like seeing a piece of heaven. I thought of him every time I sang and it didn’t hurt as much. When I thought of him, the way they stared at me didn’t make me feel as sick—-

Remembering the way Aria had turned to him made Kellion’s fists clench in impotent rage, and he expelled his breath in a furious hiss. She had looked at him like a child...a child who had been beaten to death, a child betrayed by the very people she had loved and trusted.

When he died, I died with him.The way her lips twisted then had made Kellion want to kiss her – anything to stop her from being eaten alive by her grief.

And one day I just woke up and I couldn’t speak. Every time I tried, it was like I was killing him, choking his little neck, betraying his memory—-

Slowly, Kellion started to walk. His pace increased with each step until he was practically running.

His death made me see the world in a blur, but when you came into my life...

He ran harder, a lone dark figure in the road, a shadow that streaked under glowing lampposts.

But it was no use. There was nowhere to run, no way to escape the weight of Aria’s last words. Even now, he could still feel her fingers on his cheek, could still feel how she had trembled.

I didn’t just start living.

You made the world seem like a nice place, too.

Kellion crashed to his knees.

Aria, I’m sorry.

The words were a shamed whisper in his heart.