Page 15 of Wicked Salvation

She sits up, looking in my eyes. There’s a spark in them.

“If other people think I’m beautiful and priceless and love every single moment they spend around me, why have they never told me?”

I suck in a breath. “Maybe you never gave them a chance before you jumped into whatever you have going on with Silas.” At this point I don’t want to even call it a relationship.

“Lucy?”

“Hm?”

“Can I tell you a secret?”

I nod. “You can tell me anything, Edie.”

Eden sucks in a deep breath. “I knew it was going to be Silas before I even came to this school. From the moment myparents told me that they would be sending me here, I spent hours coming through social media to findsomebodyimportant enough to use in my plan.” Her eyes are fixed on something behind me. “Silas was never supposed to be a long-term plan. But now, I’m too deep in. It feels like I can’t do anything but continue down the path I’m on.”

It’s just my luck that I deleted all my social media accounts years ago.

I’m not shocked, though. Surprised, maybe, but not shocked. Eden has been living in fight-or-flight her entire life. Whether she knows it or not, everything she does is centered around surviving. And before she met him, she thought Silas was her way to survive.

Finally, I can see the bigger picture. I look down at her hands—no ring.Good.

“If you could go back in time, would you make the same decisions?”

Her answer is immediate, frowning. “No.” Absent-mindedly she ghosts her fingers over a bruise. “Why are you even asking me that?”

“Maybe I have a time machine.”

She chuckles. My heart does that thing.

We fall into silence again. She drinks her tea,; I drink in the sight of her.

I could watch her forever.

Iwantto watch her forever.

But she isn’t mine to watch.

“Lucy?”

“Hm?”

She sets down her cup, wringing her fingers like she’s nervous about something.

“I’m feeling so many different things right now, and I don’t know which is which. But I know I don’t want to feel like this anymore. I wish you did have a time machine.”

Her gaze is raw, vulnerable, her eyes glassy.

“Why?”

Another long silence.

“I wish I could try something else with my life. I wish I could’ve chosen somebody else. I wish I wasn’t stuck. I wish my mind wasn’t mush most of the time, and I wish my emotions weren’t all over the place.” She’s staring at me so intently. “Most of all, I wish I cared about myself the way you care about me.”

What a wish.

“Self-love is hard, but?—”

I’m cut off by Eden holding my face, draping herself across my lap so we’re nose-to-nose. There’s chamomile on her breath from the tea.