Page 230 of The Wicked

I frowned. “No… no, it’s my fault—I did this, I neverfucking learn—I forgot that I—that I couldn’t trust me—I can’t trust me—I shouldn’t trust myself—because it’s not fucking reliable—I am—I am not fucking reliable—I shouldn’t have—”

He kissed me.

His lips stopped my rambling and breathing as he pulled me tighter towards his body. Warm. Still alive. Like mine.I’m still alive. We’re still alive.

He pulled away from the kiss, locking gazes with me as my breathing leveled gradually.

“Are you with me?” he asked quietly.

“Y-yeah.”

“Good,” he breathed. “Listen, I know how this looks; you want to blame yourself, and yeah, maybe you did make the wrong call, but you gotta remember that you’re not the first person in the world who has ever made a wrong call. It happens to everybody. And when it happens, you don’t dwell on that shit; you do everything you can to make sure you live to see another day and learn from it.”

I breathed shakily, swallowing down the nerves.

“You’re one of the bravest people I’ve ever met, Zahra. You pave roads when we are standing in front of a big fucking wall. You never break. At least you don’t show it—”

“But I did—”

“Sometimes, when we break, it’s okay to let people see, people you trust. Remember that day when you told me I could cry, and you’d never tell anyone?”

I nodded.

“Great, I’m making the same promise to you. You can break down all you want and have thousands of panic attacks; I’ll hold you through them… I’ll kiss you through them if I have to. Z, you don’t have to fucking hide from me.”

I held on to his shirt and released another calm breath.

“You can do this. I trust you with my fucking life. If anyone can get us out of this, it’s you.”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, yeah…” I looked back at the timer; four minutes left. “We don’t have much time.”

I rushed to crouch in front of it, Devil beside me.

My gaze went to the blue wire. I couldn’t take the risk of pulling it now. It could have changed its usual function since I had removed the other red wire.

I couldn’t touch the light red one. That was a no. It would most definitely be the trip wire; same went for the yellow one.

That left only the white. It never changed function. But I didn’t know what exactly its role was. It could either be… adetonator or your saving grace.

Manuel’s voice reached my head again.

“Do you want to take the risk, Zahra?”

I blinked.

“Where’s your head at, Z.”

“Here,” I blurted. “Here. I’m here.”

The timer went down to one minute.

“I’m thinking the white. It has two functions. One guarantees our safety, and the other…”

“Yeah, but what does your gut say?” Devil asked calmly as if the timer wasn’t getting close to death time.