I felt as if I was on a seesaw. Flipping from one side to the other. The side of me that’d once loved blindingly and completely, only to end up molested and trapped because of it. And the side that’d done whatever it could to forget. To put himself first and no one else.
I didn’t know how to live with myself anymore. How to choose which side of me to become and which side to eradicate once and for all.
Jareth saw straight through my hesitation, impatience filling his harsh voice. “The truth, Kas. Tell me.”
I looked up, narrowing my eyes. “And what of your truth? Will you tell me that?”
He shrugged, sprawling backward nonchalantly into the chair. His air of uncaring didn’t fly with me. His muscles were still coiled, his energy still poised, his body still hurting from my fists. There was no relaxing in this place—especially as a returned slave. “I don’t want to talk about me. I want to talk about you.”
“And I want to know what happened to everyone when you left that night.”
He tilted his head, dawn mixing with a lamp Gemma had switched on by the bar cart, splinters of amber dancing over his hair from the last remaining bottles of liquor. “I told you. I don’t know.”
“Why don’t you know? You left together. You should’ve stuck together—”
“We were stupid to think we could escape so easily.”
“Easily?” I snapped, sitting on the edge of the couch. “You think it was fucking easy slaughtering everyone and then burying their bodies? You think it was easy waiting for others to come? Easy when someone did arrive and almost fucking killed me?”
Jareth stopped pretending he wasn’t on edge and sat upright again, wincing a little at moving so quick. “We told you to come with us.”
I studied him, doing my best to see past all the shit he wouldn’t confess. “And if I had, where would I have ended up, huh? Where did you end up? Where the hell is our family, Jareth?”
He pursed his lips, swallowing down answers he wasn’t ready to spill.
Taut silence stretched between us again. If I hadn’t known this man for years—if I hadn’t hugged him in the dark and shared promises on a daily basis, I would’ve launched myself at him again.
The smug coldness in his bi-colored stare. The arctic chill that never seemed to leave. There was nothing left inside him. Nothing soft. Nothing human. We’d survived similar ordeals, yet while I struggled with sanity because I still had a heart inside me, Jareth had nothing.
He was a void. A shell of who he’d once been.
Leaning back, ice slipped down my spine. “If you don’t care, why the hell did you come back here?”
“Because I made a promise.”
“Most of our promises are broken.”
“Yeah well, not this one.”
I ran a hand through my hair, swallowing hard as pressure built in my skull. I hoped Gemma had enough painkillers to go around because I’d long ago used up Fable’s supplies.
She’d been generous since I’d fallen off the cliff, gifting me pills when my headache grew too bad, but now I needed an entire handful. My headache needed to piss off so I could figure this shit out.
Jareth’s arrival wasn’t a coincidence, was it? His appearance was suspicious.
I didn’t like it.
“Look, let’s start somewhere easier,” Jareth muttered. “I’ll tell you what I can, okay? And then you...do the same.”
I nodded stiffly. “Fine.”
“Okay then.” He sat taller, eyeing me carefully. “Who’s the girl?”
Everything inside me grew claws. I struggled not to snarl, drowning beneath overprotectiveness. “Someone whose life means more to me than any other. So I suggest, if you want to keep breathing, that you treat her well.”
He nodded as if my declaration that Gemma came before anyone else made total sense. “I figured as much. The way you watch her...” He shrugged. “You gave us your pain to keep us safe, but her? You’d give her your life.”
I clenched my hands, relishing in the stings from my cuts. Was that true? Had I truly allowed myself to put her first in everything? I’d felt it when I’d kissed her earlier tonight. I’d suffocated beneath it as I’d run from hurting her. But I didn’t know if I’d be strong enough to stay committed.
It’d taken literally everything I had to love my family, and look where that got me. If I allowed myself to care for Gemma that deeply, that was it. My life was no longer mine.
Ever again.
Love came with consequences. So many fucking consequences. The main one being...I still had to set her free. And how the fuck was I supposed to survive when I said goodbye?
Jareth interrupted my chaotic thoughts. “Don’t kill me until you hear the full story, but...is her name Gemma Ashford?”
A low growl started in the back of my throat. “How? How the fuck do you know her name?”