Page 52 of Wicked Salvation

“Why are you here?” his voice rumbles, and I feel it in my chest.

I’m exhausted. I look him over—sitting on the damp grass, leaning back on his shoulders. I almost wonder what I look like to him, but then I realize that I don’t really care.

“I’m here to see, Vivienne,” I mutter. “Just like you are, I suppose.”

I take a wide berth, sitting on the opposite side of him. I look down at my nails, but I can feel him staring at me—and I know exactly what he’s looking at.

“Your face?—”

I interrupt him, my voice coming out harsher than I intended it. “I know, Lucian. I know. I tried standing up to him and it got worse. Somehow he figured out that I didn’t spend the night in my room after he proposed to me—I didn’t have an answer about why.” I gesture to my face. “So this is the result.”

I hear Lucian’s breath catch. “Did you tell him that we…”

“No, but he didn’t believe me anyway. It was my fault, really.” Instinctively, I go to pinch the bridge of my nose, but it’ssensitive to the touch from where he slammed my head into the marble. “I should’ve controlled the conversation better?—”

“There’s nothing that you can fucking do that warrants what he does to you, Edie.”

I fall backwards on the grass. Even that hurts, but not as bad. I look up at the sky.

“I can’t help but feel Vivienne pulled you here, then pulled me here. Even in the afterlife she’s orchestrating things,” I say, trying to change the topic.

Lucian is silent for only a heartbeat.

“Didn’t he promise not to hurt you again?” His rage is barely concealed.

I nod to myself. “Silas is not a man of his word,” I say. “I finally came face-to-face with it this weekend.” My eyes start watering. “He doesn’t care about me. I know why I’m marrying him—but I have no idea why he’s marrying me.”

There’s silence.

Tears slide down the sides of my face. I stretch my hand out, putting a hand on the cool stone that bears Vivienne’s name. “And the only two people in the world I can talk to about it are out of my life.”

I choke on the last word, a wail falling from my lips before I even realize what’s happening. All the tears I didn’t cry this weekend start pouring out. The ones I wanted to cry when Silas fucked me in the bathroom during dinner, when he choked me until I passed out in the hotel room, and when he forced my head down on him while he drove recklessly back to school.

I cry and cry and cry.

I don’t know how long I’m there for, but when I finally open my eyes—Lucian is peering down at me. The next thing I know, I’m being hoisted into his arms. He leans against Vivienne’s gravestone with me in his lap, my neck in the crook of his shoulder.

A deep breath of him centers me.

“You’ll always have me, Edie,” I feel him whisper. The stubble on his face tickles my cheeks. “I just…” He takes a deep, shuddering sigh. “I care about you too much to just listen. If you involve me in this anymore,I am going to kill him.”

I don’t need to look at his face to know that he’s not joking.

For a moment, that thought comforts me. But then I’m pulled back to reality by the truth of my situation. I need to get married. “In another life, Lucian, I would have chosen you.”

His shoulders shake. “It’s funny you’d say that,” he whispers. “Because I’ve chosen you in this one.” Another heavy breath. “I care about you so much more than you think, Edie.”

I chuckle lightly.

“Right.” My tears are soaking into his sweater. “You’re always saving me. I don’t even think you know what you’re saying because Iamme, and Ihateme. There’s nothing about me to like.” I take a deep breath. “You’ll find out once you get to know me. Everyone who knows me ends up hating me eventually.”

Lucian is silent for a long while—long enough for me to feel his hand around my waist tense, for me to hear the crickets chirping in the night, for me to smell the earthy breeze wafting through the cemetery.

“I hope you don’t take this the wrong way…” he begins. My heart starts hammering in my chest—I can’t think of the last time I didn’t take something the wrong way. But I hold my breath, hoping that Lucian will be the exception. “Do you have BPD?”

Heismy exception.

“Is it that obvious?” Something between a sob and a chuckle leaves me.