Lies in Blood (Dark Secrets #4)(85)
Author: A.M. Hudson

There were so many places like that; more memories of joy than pain. I flipped my hand over and held hers, knowing it was wrong, but owning her for myself in that moment, despite morals. “Only if I can take you there with me.”

Her tiny fingers tightened around mine. “I will go anywhere, do anything to make you okay again. It kills me that you’re stuck in that torture without me, Jase. I’m okay. I’m here. I’m alive, and I…” I knew what she wanted to say. I saw her reach out in her mind and tell me she loved me, but she didn’t say it. “I care about you. A lot,” she said instead. “So, please, just…just don’t go back there anymore. Move on. Leave it behind where it belongs: in the past.”

In her mind, as she mentioned the past, she saw a future; she pictured it for a second, with me. Her and I, together, someday, somewhere. But she pulled the thought back, discarding it quickly, because she knew she loved David. But it was enough to cheer me up, just the hope of one day, maybe, making her mine. And suddenly, I found a new reason to live.

“See—” I shuffled closer, tucking her hair behind her ear to reveal her beautiful face. “This is why I love you. Look how easily you can heal my heart. See how effortless it is for you to take my terrors away.” She was everything I’d ever dreamed of, and my deepest regret then was not finding her first. “I just…I don’t know where I’d be if I’d not found you.”

She laughed. “What do you mean?”

I hadn’t meant to add that bit; it just slipped out, leaving me scrambling for an explanation, knowing it would open my heart to her. “No one has ever cared so much before—to want to take my pain away and see that I dream of things that don’t leave scars when I wake.”

Her delicate touch stroked my cheek, making me wish I could bear to look away from her perfection for one second just to close my eyes and enjoy the way she felt. “I’m sorry you never found a girl who would see you the way I do.”

She just didn’t get it. “But I did find one.”

“Yes.” She smiled, but it was completely ruined by the pity in her eyes. “But, I want you to have love, like David and I do. I want you to find your eternal person.”

“Eternal person?”

“Yeah.”

I laughed. “Well, I found her. I’m just waiting for her to realize we were made for each other, then I get my happy ending.”

She pulled away. “That won’t happen.”

“I know.” I looked into my lap, holding on to the last of that future I’d seen with her. “But eternity is a very long time. I can hope that, one day, you’ll feel the way I do.” Or at least admit it.

“If you really do care for me, then you won’t think like that. Because, for all the confusion I have in my heart, I only want David.”

She was right. It was selfish of me to hope she’d fall out of love with David because, for that to happen, he would have to hurt her pretty badly. I took a deep breath and let it out. “Okay. Then I hope you never love me. I hope you and David live eternally happy lives together.”

“Liar.”

We both laughed. It was kind of irritating to have a person who could read me almost as well as I could read others. But nice at the same time.

“I’m trying, Ara. I do want what’s best for you. And if that’s my brother, then, in my heart, he’s who I want you to be with.” Even if I will eventually have to kill myself just to ease the pain.

“Then you should stop touching me like your girlfriend. If he saw that, he’d be really pissed.”

“Yeah, I know.” I sat back, sliding my hands slowly away from her body to savour the last touch. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

It wasn’t okay. I needed some distance. She wasn’t wearing anything but a shirt under that sheet, and the instinct-driven man inside me knew that only too well. I moved away and sat on the chair again. “Hey, can I ask you something?”

“Yeah.”

“Why didn’t you demand I give your ring back?”

She frowned. “I didn’t know that was an option.”

I scoffed. How was it not? “Ara, you never sit by and let things happen if you don’t approve. If you wanted that ring, you’d have stomped your foot until I gave it to you. So, why didn’t you?”

She stared at me, realizing it for the first time herself. She didn’t want it back. “You’re reading into it too much.”

“Am I?” I grabbed the ring from my pocket and pressed it into her palm, folding her fingers around it. “Or are you just not telling me what you really think?”

She slipped the ring back on her finger and rolled away from me, hating herself for the truth she’d just admitted inside. “Go away, Jason. You don’t know anything about me.”

But I did. I knew I shouldn’t have forced her to see that truth so soon. She wasn’t ready. “Oh, don’t know anything about you, huh?” Luckily, I also knew how to cheer her up. I pulled the blanket away from her. “I know your ticklish spot.”

“No!” She squealed, jerking around as I dug my fingers into her ribs. “Stop!”

I laughed aloud, feeling pure joy for one of the first times in so long. It was the way she laughed—such a sweet little giggle, so honest and so unguarded. I could see why my brother loved it so much. She was just so beautifully innocent.

I didn’t want her to stop, so I kept tickling, gentle enough not to hurt her but firm enough to hold her down a little so she couldn’t get away. Not that she wanted to get away. She looked up and her heart burned with love for me. This was exactly where we both wanted to be, no matter what the consequence.

“See?” I pinned both hands beside her face and leaned right down, pretending to be puffed out, knowing how much she loved it when I played human. “I know more about you than anyone else in this world, Ara-Rose. And I know you didn’t ask me for that ring because you liked the fact that I had it. You liked knowing how it made me feel to carry it, as if I owned a part of you my brother never would.”

“What part?”

All of you. Your heart, soul, mind, body—future. “The truth.”

She went completely stiff under me. That was all I needed to say, and her mind would fill in the rest.

I tried not to laugh. As I moved to kneel back, the warmth off her body—from between her legs—brushed my knee. She was naked beneath this shirt. I knew I shouldn’t look, but my eyes slowly strayed down her waist, past her hips, stopping there where the shirt rose up past her belly button. She let me look. She laid there, legs slightly apart, me kneeling between them, and for that second, she let me look.