Every Last Breath - Armentrout Jennifer L. - Страница 66
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My lips slipped into a small smile. “I know. He finally showed himself. He kind of looked like me, if I was a dude. It was weird. Maybe not, since he really was sort of my brother. I have a really messed-up family.”
He snorted. “Shortie, that is one thing I can understand.”
I arched a brow. “I stabbed him in the heart. He didn’t see it coming.” At that point, I left out the gory details surrounding the whole dying part. “I ended up in this bizarre, in-between place. I saw... I saw my mother again.”
Shock splashed across his striking face. “What?”
“It really wasn’t her. More like her spirit. All of us were connected—are connected. When the Lilin died and I was dying, she was able to come to me.” I paused, frowning. “She was kind of a bitch.
Again.”
Roth let out a surprised laugh. “I could’ve told you that.”
I narrowed my eyes at him, but told him what Lilith had said to me. “She talked to me for a little bit, and then the world started falling apart around me. I thought I heard her say that she had loved me when she’d first held me as a baby, but I’m not sure. That really doesn’t match everything else she said to me.
“Anyway, Lilith told me that I was dying and it felt like... It felt like I blinked and then I was in the tree house. It didn’t feel like days had passed. Maybe minutes, at the most an hour or so. I didn’t think I’d get this—a second chance. I’m still not sure how I did.”
Pain flickered over his face, and it resonated within me. His voice was low when he spoke. “I never thought I’d see you again. That I’d spend an eternity wanting you—mourning you. I could’ve dealt with that if I knew you were alive and happy. It would’ve been hard. I probably would’ve spent a lot of time banging my head off a wall if you ended up with Stony.” He paused. “And I probably would’ve also been a creepy stalker keeping tabs on you. I mean, I’m a demon. What does anyone expect? But as hard as that would have been on me, I could bear it because you would’ve been alive.”
Turning my head, I kissed his palm. “This isn’t some kind of dream or hallucination, is it?”
“I don’t think so, but if that’s the case, I don’t want to wake up from it.” His nose brushed mine as he spoke. “I could spend forever like this.”
I bit down on my lip, knowing so much more still needed to be said. “It was so hard leaving your bed—leaving you. I want you to know that. I didn’t do it lightly. It hurt, Roth, and it was the hardest thing I’d ever had to do. All I could’ve hoped was that one day you’d forgive me and find some sort of peace, because I had to do it. I had to...”
“You needed to...save the world,” he said softly. “And you did. Look at you, you little hero, saving mankind from the apocalypse.”
“I guess I did.” That felt weird to think, to believe in. I kind of felt like someone owed me a lifetime supply of sugar-cookie dough, my favorite thing in the world to eat. “This is going to sound terrible to admit, but when I...well, after everything happened and I was lying there, I thought that saving the world really wasn’t worth it, because I—”
“I get what you’re saying. You don’t even need to finish the sentence, and no, it doesn’t make you a terrible person. If I’d had my way, we’d be lounging in some far-off island as the world around us went to shit.”
“No, you wouldn’t have left.”
A single dark brow rose. “You give me too much credit, Layla. That’s exactly what I was planning. I was pretty much going to kidnap you and whisk you away. I figured we could survive, even against the Alphas, while drinking mojitos and getting a suntan. We’d try at least, and I was willing to watch the world burn if that meant being there with you to watch it. I wouldn’t have sacrificed you.
My...compassion for others, with the exception of you, does not run that deep.”
He was being honest and he was a demon, so it wasn’t really like I could fault him for any of that.
“So that was all with Lilith?” He smoothed his thumb along my cheek. When I nodded, he frowned.
“I don’t understand. How did you get back here?”
“You mean how am I alive?”
His lips pursed. “I was trying to avoid saying that, so I didn’t sound ungrateful or anything.”
“I don’t know how, Roth. I was wondering if you did something. Made another deal, maybe?”
“I tried. Went to the witches, but they said there was nothing they could do,” he explained. “I did get to see Bambi. Well, Bambi peeled herself off that woman the moment I showed up. It was... I needed to see her then.” He took a deep breath. “I didn’t do this, Layla. Trust me. If I could gloat about saving you, I would be all over that, but this... I had nothing to do with this.”
“Then who?” I whispered.
He gave a little shake of his head. “I don’t know. Had to be a higher being. Maybe the Alphas?”
I snort-laughed. Real attractive, but I couldn’t help it. “Doubtful. They hate me. They probably threw a pizza party in the clouds when they learned I was gone.”
“Pizza party?” he murmured, the corner of his lips tipping up slightly. “More like a kegger.”
“Thanks.”
That slight grin grew a little more as he lifted his gaze to mine. “You know what? Doesn’t matter.
You’re here. That’s all that matters to me.”
I wasn’t sure if it did matter who saved me, but there was a part of me that still worried, because what if some random creature came to collect, like the witches had? I didn’t like the idea of someone showing up to demand payment at any given time.
Unless it had been Castiel, because I was totally cool with him rising me up from perdition if that was what happened.
Roth guided my head back and he kissed me, lingering in a way that made my toes curl. “Right now, all I want to think about is the fact that you’re here. That’s all I can focus on.” He caught my lower lip in a quick, delicious little nip. “If someone or something comes knocking one day looking for payback, we’ll face it together.”
Wiggling so our bodies were pressed close, I buried my face against his chest. “Together,” I whispered.
“Together,” he repeated. “Never again will you have to face anything like that alone. No matter what. I’m going to be glued to your freaking hip if need be.”
For the first time since I woke up in the tree house, an acute tension eased out of my muscles and I smiled. Even during all the beautiful, hands-on welcome home Roth had given me, I hadn’t really smiled. I’d done a lot of other things, but now, as he kissed the top of my head, all I could do was beam.
No matter what, we would face anything that came our way together.
Roth rolled me onto my back. Hovering over me with his weight supported on powerful arms, he grinned that one-sided grin that used to infuriate me to no end. But now it was a glimpse of the Roth I fell in love with; the Roth I was going to do my damnedest to spend eternity with.
thirty-one
“SO...WHAT’S IT FEEL like to die and come back to life?”
I shook my head as I frowned down at the cell phone. “You’ve asked me that question, like, three times already.”
Stacey’s snort echoed through the bathroom. “I’m asking every day I talk to you just to make sure nothing has changed and you’re not going to turn into a zombie. I don’t wanna have to go all Rick Grimes on your ass.”
Rolling my eyes, I twisted the length of my hair in a top bun, and then shoved about a hundred pins in to keep it in place. “That’s not going to happen, and I’d be a walker, not a zombie.”
“Semantics,” she replied. “Am I going to see you today?”
I nodded, and then realized, like an idiot, she couldn’t see me. “Yeah, I think Roth and I were planning to swing by this evening. He mentioned something about picking up cheese fries.”
Stacey and her mom, along with her baby brother, were still staying at her mom’s sister ’s house.
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