“The heart is never wrong, honey. It’s just stupidly hopeful like the rest of us.”
“Love was a risk. It was wild and unpredictable. You could either hold on for the ride, not knowing how it would end, or you could let go and never know the amazing you could have had.”
“I want to see you. I want to see how you smile and feel your hands against mine. I want to lie next to you and dream with you and I can’t. I’ll…I’ll never have that.”
“I lie next to you every night. Don’t you know that?”
I sobbed hard into my hand. My devoured heart reached for him.
“You got me, babe. Fuck…you’ve had me.”
“Told you I was gone for you … Think you know what that means. Think you might be feeling me the same way and that’s what you were wanting to tell me.” He ran this thumb along my jaw down to my neck. “Am I right?”
I nodded. “Yes.”
“Good,” he said, smiling. “That’s ours, Wild. What we have, how we build on it, and I don’t give a fuck if it makes sense or not. It was fast but I don’t care. People might not get it like we do but again” – he dipped closer – “I do not fuckin’ care. What I do care about is you, everything that involves you.”
“This”, Tori hissed with exasperation, tipped forward, and gestured with a quick hand between her and Jamie, “will never happen, so you giving a fuck is a waste of your time.”
“This” - Jamie mimicked her gesture but kept his voice smooth and even – “has been happening for a while, Legs, and no part of it is a waste of my time. Not even this back and forth shit where you pretend you’re not hard up for me.”
“I fell in love with Wild’s voice in my ear. Now I had her in my arms while she was giving it to me, and I was out of my fucking mind lost for this girl. There was no turning back.
I’d be anything she needed. I’d be everything she needed.”
“I don’t understand what it was about you, but since that first day, that first text you sent me, it was perfect and everything I needed and you knew. “ I lifted my head to look at him. “You just knew the right things to say and that right times to call. You healed me. You didn’t know it but you did!”
“You were healing me, too, babe.”
“Never felt anything like this. Told you I didn’t care how crazy this was. Still don’t. I love you.”
“Brian,” I whispered.
He took my face between his hands.
“I love you, Syd,” he repeated, eyes serious. “Fuck it, all right? Fuck our crazy. I want it.”
A laugh bubbled in my throat.
“I love you, too,” I said. “You’re the best mistake I’ve ever made.”
“You are a dream, Brian Savage,” I repeated, dropping my head until our foreheads touched. “You’re my dream. The most amazing person I’ve ever known, and I’m going to heal you. I am, and you’re not going to be able to stop me so don’t even bother trying. This is happening. It’s my turn. You healed me and now I’m healing you. I’m going to do it. I’m going to make sure you’re okay … I’m doing to give you Wild for the rest of your life and so much of it you won’t have room to feel anything else.”
“If she was expecting feelings to be left out of this, whatever this was between us, it was too fucking late for that.”
“She couldn’t know too much. She could never know.
Never.
I gave her enough so I could still have her, but I took everything.
Every fucking thing. It was mine and she wanted me to have it. She gave it up. She was perfect that way. She was perfect in every way.”
“My world was one miserable mistake-shaping second after another, except for the breaks in my misery that belonged to her.
And no way was I ready to give that up.
Best two and a half weeks of my life came from a girl who was never meant to give me anything.
And she was giving me everything.”
“Wanna set your whole fucking world on fire, babe, ‘cause that’s what you’ve done to mine.”
“I was about to sprint across the room and launch myself into his arms like Baby from Dirty Dancing”
“I wanted to hear her voice. More of it. I couldn’t get this woman out of my head.”
“She broke apart first, a beautiful chaos of fire and light in my arms. Dirty and delicate.”
“Gone for you fast, Wild,” he began. Can’t explain it. Don’t know how it happened or what it was about you specifically that got to me, but you fuckin’ got to me, babe, and it was good. Best I’d felt in a long time, maybe ever. Didn’t want to risk anything messing that kind of perfection up. It was too good the way we had it, your voice in my ear, what you’d give me every time we spoke. I was living for that.”
“a kiss that tasted like love and felt like madness,”
“The flip and twist. No one can ignore the flip and twist. It only happens during certain occasions, and when it happens, you remember it.”
“Yeah. I do, Syd. I give a shit about you.”
“The Odd Couple. Is this that one where the one guy is a mess and the other is a neat freak?”
“Yes, it is.”
“And you are?”
“A mess.” Then he looked at the book in my hands. “Oh, you mean in the play? I’m the neat freak. Felix.”
“Talking to that fool is like trying to put socks on an octopus!”
“After a while Mary said, “Zsadist?”
“Yeah?”
“What are those markings?”
His frowned and flicked his eyes over to her, thinking, as if she didn’t know? But then . . . well, she had been a human. Maybe she didn’t. “They’re slave bands. I was . . . a slave.”
“Did it hurt when they were put on you?”
“Yes.”
“Did the same person who cut your face give them to you?”
“No, my owner’s hellren did that. My owner . . . she put the bands on me. He was the one who cut my face.”
“How long were you a slave?”
“A hundred years.”
“How did you get free?”
“Phury. Phury got me out. That’s how he lost his leg.”
“Were you hurt while you were a slave?”
Z swallowed hard. “Yes.”
“Do you still think about it?”
“Yes.” He looked down at his hands, which suddenly were in pain for some reason. Oh, right. He’d made two
fists and was squeezing them so tightly his fingers were about to snap off at the knuckles.
“Does slavery still happen?”
“No. Wrath outlawed it. As a mating gift to me and Bella.”
“What kind of slave were you?”
Zsadist shut his eyes. Ah, yes, the question he didn’t want to answer. For a while it was all he could do to force himself to stay in the chair. But then, in a falsely level voice, he said,
“I was a blood slave. I was used by a female for blood.”
The quiet after he spoke bore down on him, a tangible weight.
“Zsadist? Can I put my hand on your back?”
His head did something that was evidently a nod, because Mary’s gentle palm came down lightly on his
shoulder blade. She moved it in a slow, easy circle.
“Those are the right answers,” she said. “All of them.”
He had to blink fast as the fire in the furnace’s window became blurry. “You think?” he said hoarsely.
“No. I know.”
“You'll dine with us, Comte? And you, Anthony?"
"I trespass on your hospitality!" Armand protested.
"Devil a bit, man!" said Rupert. "It's Avon's hospitality you trespass on, and our patience.”
“To apologize for what you most wanted to do, to concede that it was obnoxious, boring, 'vulgar and unsafe' --- that was the worst thing.”
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