His stance. Those demanding eyes. The other half of my soul . . . he was there.
“I was coming to find you,” Johnny said, his breathing rough from dragging me.
“I can see that.” Dare casually raised his arm, enough for me to notice the gun in his hand. Tilting his head to the side slowly, he asked in a mocking tone, “Are you scared, Princess? It won’t hurt.”
The venom dripping from his words was so unlike anything I’d ever heard from him, his hatred for me tearing at my chest.
“Don’t do this,” I pleaded, the ache in my heart continuing to pour through each word. “I know . . . I know about your fiancée. Dare, I’m so sorry.”
I knew the moment I slipped up.
Felt it in the way Johnny nearly crushed me.
Saw it in the way Dare’s head jerked back.
“What the fuck did you just say?” Dare gritted as he took slow steps toward me. Glancing at Johnny, his eyes narrowed on him. “Drop her.”
As soon as Johnny’s arms disappeared, Dare’s hand closed around my throat and he lifted his gun to my forehead.
But once we were in that position, I saw it.
What Dare was seeing, but not understanding.
The woman he was pressing to the window who looked so similar—yet different—to the one he’d been loving.
Using the barrel of the gun, he pushed the hood back to reveal more of my face, the disbelief in his eyes increasing as he did.
“Johnny, light.” Before Johnny could respond, Dare bit out, “Fucking light. Shine a light on her eyes.”
I flinched against the cool glass, instinctively closed my eyes when the light from Johnny’s phone appeared directly in front of me, and cried out when Dare roughly forced my head back, the window creaking from the blow.
“Open your eyes!”
I blinked rapidly against the blinding light until I could hold my eyes open and had to blink again and again once it disappeared. When I could look at Dare again, hurt, disappointment, and an overwhelming confusion lingered in his eyes.
He shook his head with a quick jerk and said, “One chance to explain what you just said.”
It took me a few moments to realize what he was asking, and then I was nodding. One chance . . . and I had no doubt that was exactly what he was about to give me. “You’ve taken everything from me.”
He looked shocked for countless seconds before his eyes turned murderous. Tightening his fingers around my throat, he growled out his demand, “What was that?”
“I gave you my heart blindly,” I choked out. “And continued to love you even after I found out who you were—who we were to each other.”
The cruel look was replaced with a horrified understanding, and his hand let up marginally.
“You silently demanded my soul, and I didn’t care that it would end like this, because it was beautiful while it lasted. So I let you take and take and take until there was nothing left of me to give,” I cried.
He shook his head roughly, like he was trying to clear my words from his mind. “Have you lost your mind, Princess?”
“Dare, you know me,” I cried out.
“Stop,” he demanded. “Your family has taken everything from me.” His finger slid from its resting place against the barrel of the gun to the trigger, and my tears fell faster.
“Dare, please—”
“Just kill the bitch,” Johnny demanded from beside me, his voice filled with a crazed excitement.
“For Gia and my dad, I will celebrate the day I ended your life,” Dare promised.
“Please. I love you,” I whispered, choking on my sobs. Holding his dark stare, I reached up to place my shaking fingers on the inside of his bicep. “Until the very end.”
I knew the moment it hit him. The gun relaxed slightly against my forehead and all the air seemed to be sucked up around us by the man holding me. “Elle?” he asked on a breath.
A pained cry left my chest. Unable to nod, unable to confirm, I just prayed he could see somewhere in the ice-blue eyes I was the girl he loved.
“If you want to live, let her go immediately,” Kieran warned in a lethal tone.
Dare tensed but didn’t turn.
“Bruise her, and I’ll kill you slowly,” Kieran promised, this time his voice was closer.
“Elle?” Dare repeated.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for everything. I wanted to tell you,” I added quickly, my soul crying out when he abruptly shoved away from me, as if I’d burned him.
He ripped the bandana off his face, his expression pained as he roughed a hand through his hair.
“Fucking Holloway whore, I knew it,” Johnny growled. “Shoulda killed you when I had the chance.”
My pleading, broken stare hadn’t left Dare, but I knew the moment Johnny’s words reached Kieran . . . I felt it.
The hall was loud with Johnny’s curses and my quiet cries, but the house had never been more silent. It was as if death had passed by, leaving an ear-shattering silence in his path.
Johnny shot toward me then immediately staggered back, his roar breaking the heavy silence that surrounded us.
He pulled a blade from his shoulder, a sadistic laugh sounding in his chest. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you not to bring a knife to a gun fight, Nightshade?”
Kieran’s expression and tone as he focused on Johnny were calm . . . lethal. Pure assassin. “I’ll skin you alive for hurting her.”
Dare slammed into Kieran’s body when Kieran lunged for Johnny, sending them both into the wall beside me—Dare’s gun sliding across the floor as fists and curses flew.
“You let me think she was dead,” Dare seethed, landing a punch to Kieran’s side. “After everything I did and everything you pulled me back into, you’ve been fucking me over for—”
“You stole what was mine,” Kieran growled, finally showing his rage. “You stole every reason for living because yours was taken from you.”
“She ran from you.”
I wanted to scream at them to stop. I wanted to beg Kieran to drop the knife he’d just slid from his boot. I wanted to warn Dare of what Kieran’s next move would be.
But I was being forced to watch the entire thing in Johnny’s embrace with the bloody knife pressed to my throat as he slowly backed me away.
“You should’ve died a long time ago,” he whispered into my ear, his breaths rough.
My heart lurched when Kieran swiped his blade along Dare’s calf, Dare’s roar of pain filling the hallway as he twisted Kieran’s hand backward and slammed it repeatedly against the wall until the knife clattered to the floor.
Johnny’s grip tightened when an anguished cry tumbled from my lips, pressing the blade closer to my throat.
He hushed me, the soft sound that could easily be so comforting held so much warning.
Dare reached for the knife, but Kieran raised his fists above his head, bringing them down hard on his back. Dare stumbled away, releasing Kieran from his caged position against the wall and swiping his gun from the floor to aim at the man I’d spent a lifetime loving.
His chest rose and fell sharply as he stared Kieran down. “I wanted you to know the pain of losing your world. I wanted you to feel it every day. But it wouldn’t have affected you because she was never yours.”
Kieran just stood there with an expression so calm it was unnerving, but his body was tensed and his hand was slowly moving toward one of his pockets.
Dare’s head tilted marginally, a jolt seeming to go through his body when he realized I wasn’t where he’d left me. He turned fully, rage and fear warring on his face as he took a hesitant step in my direction.
“Johnny,” he began, his voice placating. “Johnny, what are you doing?”
“Told you not to trust her,” Johnny snarled. “Told you there was something about her.”
Dare and Kieran were now matching us step for step. Dare’s focus was on Johnny’s shaking hand that held the knife to my throat, his limp growing more prominent with
each step from where Kieran cut him.
Kieran kept to the wall, nearly disappearing in the shadows as he soundlessly stalked us. The easiest way to track him was the moonlight catching on his exposed blade from where it streamed in from the many windows on the wall opposite him.
“Think it’s convenient we find out she’s alive, and not two seconds later she’s crawling into your bed.”
My chest heaved with a sob and my body tried to bend under the weight of my grief. “Dare, n—” My head was wrenched back, a strangled cry catching in my throat when the blade pressed in to the point where it became painful.
“This is why Gia’s gone,” he yelled, forcing my face in Dare’s direction for emphasis before roughly releasing my hair so he was leading me by the blade alone. “Remember her, Dare? Or is a little Holloway pussy all you needed to forget?”
Dare’s lip curled and he rolled his neck, but he kept limping forward, his gun hanging loosely at his side. “Let her go, Johnny.”
“Remember what it felt like to watch her die for the sake of this girl. Remember what it felt like to hold her while her blood ran cold.”
A cry ripped from my lungs, tearing through the hall when the blade pierced my skin.
“Johnny!” Dare started to rush toward where we were, only to stop, his expression panicked.
Johnny’s chest vibrated against my back. “I missed that sound. Isn’t it nice?” he asked loudly, his voice wavering on a growl. “Know you’re there, Nightshade. If you’re smart, you’ll stay back. Fiancée for fiancée. Or did you forget why we’re here, Dare? You realized yet that every time she left you she was back here fucking him?”
Dare’s chest heaved and his armed hand raised slightly. “Let her go.”
“Now that I think about it, you probably like blades against your throat being the assassin’s whore, don’t—”
“Fucking let her go!”
Johnny snarled in pain and his body jerked, the blade twitching against my throat before it fell away along with his hand that now had a knife sticking out of it. I stood there in stunned confusion before I pushed away from him with a strangled sob, my legs automatically taking me to comfort and safety . . .
I staggered backward when Dare suddenly aimed at me, a crippling acceptance washing over me in the split second that seemed to last forever and pass within one last beat of my heart before he fired, sending my world into deafening silence.
Because I knew it would end this way, and I’d been foolish to think it wouldn’t.
I hated that we didn’t have more time and that we’d been raised to hate each other.
But given the chance, I’d do it all over again.
My chest moved roughly with each ragged breath. Time passed achingly slow as I waited, gun still aimed on my best friend, my eyes now on the girl just in front of him.
She stood still, her wounded eyes fixated on me as she swayed slightly, as if in a daze.
A jolt went through her body when Johnny collapsed to the floor behind her, and I slowly lowered my gun, but was unable to move.
I needed to check on Johnny, but I knew there was no reason. I knew where I’d shot him, and I could see the dark blood rapidly spreading out from beneath his head.
I needed to go to the girl in front of me, but didn’t know how to. She’d buried herself so deep in my heart, but her presence there suddenly felt toxic. She was everything I loved and everything I hated. I wanted to worship her and watch the life drain from those cold blue eyes.
I had absolutely no fucking clue who she was.
I watched numbly as Kieran knelt in front of Johnny to unnecessarily check his pulse, moving quickly to grab the knife he’d thrown into Johnny’s wrist before taking Johnny’s gun and sliding it toward me. The same one Johnny had aimed at Ell—Lily when she’d started running from him.
Johnny had always been destructive, but I’d spent our lives controlling his anger.
And I’d just killed him for it . . . over the girl I’d brought him here to kill.
Rage burned deep in my chest when Kieran grabbed El—when he grabbed her, turning her so she was no longer facing me and lifting her head to examine her neck. A string of mumbled curses left him, his voice sounding off from the ringing in my ears, before he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her back toward the wall.
As soon as he hit it, he slid down to sit on the floor with her in his lap.
My finger twitched along the barrel of the gun and my jaw ached from how hard I was clenching it.
I wanted to rip her away from him.
I wanted to punch him again for everything he’d forced me to do over the years.
I wanted to destroy him for ever touching something so perfect.
And I wanted to hate her.
But fuck if it didn’t hurt seeing them like that.
She looked back at me, her hands pressed against Kieran’s chest as she tried to stand.
“So this is you?” I asked, breathless. “This is it? It wasn’t just him you were trying to keep from me, it was this. And you knew the whole time.”
“No,” she said when she finally stood—with Kieran’s help because he still refused to let her go. “No, not the whole time.”
“How long then?” I yelled, my voice reverberating down the hall. “A year? Year and a half?”
“No,” she cried out. “I—” She turned to look at Kieran pleadingly, but he stood like a statue with his hardened glare set on me.
“She’s trying to get away from you,” I growled. “Clearly you never noticed the last couple years since she’s been fucking terrified of you, but this is what it looks like.”
“Stop!”
But I didn’t know who she was talking to because Kieran had set her aside and taken a step toward me. My finger twitched closer toward the trigger, but before he could take another step, Elle situated herself between us and shoved Kieran back.
“Stop.”
For long moments she stared up at him, her hand pressed firmly to his chest like she could keep him from moving . . . and somehow she did.
Turning, she looked at me with the most pained expression. “I was terrified of what Kieran would do to you if he ever found out. I was terrified of what the two of you would do to each other when I realized who you were. I hated my life here . . . but I’ve never been afraid of him. I’ve already hurt him enough, don’t make this worse.”
“Hurt him?” I asked on an incredulous laugh. “You’ve been fucking lying to me, Elle,” I growled and dragged a hand through my hair. “Lil—I can’t even say your goddamn name.”
“I’ve never lied to you, you would know if I had. I told you as much of the truth as I could.”
“Half-truths are still lies. Omissions are still lies.”
Through the moonlight coming in through the windows, I could see the tears pooling in her eyes as she stepped away from Kieran. “I warned you,” she choked out. “Even before I knew who you were, I knew I wouldn’t be able to tell you about my life because the worlds we’ve grown up in need to remain hidden. My life had to since I was supposed to be dead. And you told me to lie to y—”
“I thought you were running from a shitty life,” I explained. “A boyfriend, a husband, something. I thought there was something else you were hiding that I was still trying to figure out. A kid—fucking something other than you being Lily O’Sullivan.”
“What difference does it make?”
I flung my arms out and yelled, “It makes all the difference. I look at you . . . Christ, I see your eyes and so much hatred builds up inside me.”
She grabbed her stomach, a strained sob bursting from her.
“I have spent my life hating those eyes. I have spent the last four years waiting to unleash hell on those eyes. I have spent the last few weeks dreaming of watching the light die in those eyes. Your eyes.”
Her head shook slowly, her chest heaving with her uneven breaths. “I’m not Mickey.”
“That’s all I’ll ever see
.”
She bent slightly, her mouth opened in a silent cry as Kieran pulled her back.
“Put your gun away,” he ordered softly.
I shot him a look as I turned toward Johnny, and stopped when I saw Beck’s little brother standing a dozen feet away with a gun in hand.
“Conor,” Kieran bit out. “Put your gun away.”
Conor looked between Kieran and me a few times before reluctantly doing as ordered, his tense stance relaxing when I holstered mine as well.
Bending to grab Johnny’s, I slid it into the back of my pants then fought against the pain in my leg as I walked over to where he lay.
“Anyone else on property will be rushing in here in the next few seconds to find out what that gunshot was. You should go.”
I slanted him a glare and curled my lip, but I didn’t respond as I bent to roll Johnny onto his side. I swallowed thickly, forcing back any emotion that rose because the people in the hall with me didn’t deserve to see it.
I wasn’t sure I deserved to feel it.
Grabbing his waist, I pulled him closer and gritted my teeth as I hefted him up, struggling to get him on my shoulder and back to standing when my leg was still threatening to give.
“Dare—”
“Don’t,” Kieran murmured, silencing her. But seconds later he was there next to me, helping me up.
“Get your hands off me,” I said through gritted teeth, turning so Johnny’s body was away from him. “You fucking begged for my help. You pulled me back into a world I spent years getting out of. And I hate you for it.”
He didn’t respond or give any indication he’d even heard me. And I didn’t care.
I started walking down the hall, my steps slow and unsteady, my jaw clenched as I passed where Conor was trying to hold Lily back.
“No. No, Dare, don’t do this,” she called out. “You promised. You promised me after.”
I knew what she meant as soon as the word left her lips.
“I love you,” she breathed. “Until the very end.”
“After, Elle. After.”
Without looking back at her, I murmured, “I lied.”
I didn’t know why I was here.