Sickness rushed up my throat. I held up a shaking hand, looking at Kas. “You’re seriously going to let him spill everything? All the stuff you couldn’t say to me? The past that has such a hold over you?”
Kas licked his bottom lip, his face pensive and wild. His long hair lay tangled over his shoulders. His scruff made him look more suited for living in the woods than drinking expensive alcohol in a decadent mansion, but beneath it all was a stranger.
A man I’d fallen in love with; a man I both feared and fawned over. A man who wasn’t just waking up but had woken.
His eyes met mine.
He held my stare until my heart jackhammered and my chest was too tight, and then he whispered with a wisdom I hadn’t heard in his tone before. “You asked me why? Why talk about the things that will trigger me? The things that I doubt I’ll ever forget? The things that bind me and Jareth past blood, past family, past hell itself?” He took my hand in his, his fingers cool from the glass and strong. So, so strong. “It’s simple, Gem.”
I swallowed hard as he traced my knuckles with his thumb. “Nothing about this is simple.”
“It hasn’t been. I agree.” Kas nodded. “But it is. I didn’t understand before. But it’s so fucking simple.”
“I don’t...I don’t understand.” Goosebumps ran up my arms as he let my hand go and took another drink.
Lowering the glass from his mouth, he gave me a gentle smile but behind it lurked steel. A rod of iron. A decision forged with mountains and stone. “A choice. Everything I’ve been running from, hiding from, unwilling to face was because I chose not to remember. I chose to let it beat me into something I’m not proud of. It made me hurt you. It made me hurt myself. It will eventually end up killing you, me, and the future I’m fighting so goddamn hard to deserve with you.”
He leaned back, propping his elbow on the armrest and inhaling deep. “It’s taken me a long fucking time—an embarrassingly long time that I’m not proud of—but...I’ve finally made a different choice.” He sucked in a breath, his voice going as cold as Jareth’s. “For all the shit that I did remember, I forgot one fundamental piece.”
Jareth grunted, sounding just as wild as Kas looked. “You forgot who you were...to us.”
Kas shook his head. “I forgot who I was to me.”
“You were more than just our brother, Kas. You were the reason we all didn’t die in here.”
“And you were the reason I did what I did.”
Jareth pressed a fist to his heart. “Whatever you need from me, I’ll give it. If you need death, I will grant it. If you need truth, I will speak it. If you need another punch to the skull to wake you the fuck up and remember who you are, then I’ll beat you until my hands are raw.” He smiled with a reverent threat before pointing a finger at me. “You want to deserve her? Fuck that, you already do. You deserve her a thousand times over.”
I shivered as Kas didn’t speak. He watched Jareth. He breathed, but he didn’t speak.
Jareth threw back the rest of his drink and poured a third. He licked his lips as he settled back, getting comfy as if this was a casual night between friends. “Go on then, Kas. Tell me why I gave you one chance in the forest. Why I would’ve happily killed you if it meant protecting that girl sitting dumbfounded beside you. Tell me why you’re the only fucking person I will ever trust for the rest of my life. Tell her. Tell yourself. And maybe, I can be the savior in this story. I can rescue you this time, just like you rescued me.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
THAT WAS THE THING about choices.
Most of the time, we made them without even thinking. Sometimes, outside influences made our decisions for us. Other times, we’d allow others the responsibility. But most of the time...it was on us.
And that was a hard fucking pill to swallow.
Because of my decisions, I’d lived in this valley like a thoughtless beast for a decade. I’d allowed a past—a past that should’ve had no power over me—to have all the power in the goddamn world over my dreams, my actions, and my heart.
I let a choice almost kill the girl I’d fallen in love with.
I let a choice cripple me until I was a pathetic, repetitive, poor excuse of a man who ought to be locked in a padded room and fed antidepressants for the rest of his life.
But I no longer wanted that choice.
I no longer wanted to be afraid of falling asleep. I didn’t want to have to chain myself to a bed so Gemma was safe from me. I didn’t want to ever run the risk of waking up and finding her dead because I let my choice to hide become so much bigger than who I’d been.