Page 85 of Manacled Hearts

I deserve this, don’t I? I pushed her away yet again and threw the rejection in her face even though my actions don’t match my words. I craved opening up to her, craved to share, craved to know more of her, know everything, but I don’t deserve to know anything at all. I shouldn’t. Even if her confession to Morrigan weaves like tendrils of fire through my mind.

She opens her mouth to answer, but another voice pops into the room.

“Okay, I’m done. Let’s go.” Morrigan wheezes past me and heads straight for the door.

Evelyn says goodbye to everyone, but refuses to acknowledge me anymore. She leaves without a word.

I have a bad feeling about this.

The sparkle in her eyes looked a lot like revenge.

CHAPTER 19

FINNIGAN

Two more agonizing hours passed before I could leave Vin’s house. I thought planning and plotting our revenge would do something sweet to my insides, but the opposite happened. All this talk about the man who viciously took the first woman I ever loved away from me stirred a brutal discomfort. It wasn’t pain. Not because it didn’t hurt, but because the actual pain was reserved for the other reason these hours were agony—Evelyn.

She left in a strange mood, a look of vengeance in her eyes, but resolve too. Resignation. Like she gave up on something and the idea doesn’t sit right with me. I don’t know why.

Oh, fuck it, of course I know why.

Because it might be me she gave up on, and that makes me all sorts of uncomfortable. Why, I don’t know, because I want her to give up. I was the one who chased her away, but not because I didn’t want her.

I want her so much I can’t breathe properly unless she’s around. And when she is, she sucks it out of me, turning into want, need, and something so visceral my heart beats violently in my chest. I crave her starving silver and gold eyes, their invisible touch, the hunger beneath their surface, the demand to live and indulge. To ask for more and feed on the life she never had.

I want her.

Knowing she might go out there to seek her desires from someone else fills me with both rage and unfounded jealousy. I might not deserve her, but neither does any other asshole.

Now, I’m standing under the spray of the shower in my penthouse, trying to wash away these conflicting feelings. But I think I’m asking for far too much from mere water. I give it five minutes before I walk out, striding out onto the terrace that overlooks the sea, with nothing but a towel wrapped around my waist. I’m looking for some answers from the calm waves that look too small from this height, but the conflict seems to have the only reply.

The moon has risen, its light brushing over the water, and the calmness unsettles me. It’s a sheer contrast to my inner turmoil, because I haven’t gone over today’s revelation that Bartiste not only is responsible for Evelyn’s abduction, but he also touched her.

I can’t even bring myself to say the true word of what the dead man did to her. I’m a fucking coward. Yet, no matter the word, the reality is the same. I could have lost her to him.

She could have been gone before I had a chance to know her, to witness the woman she’s becoming. Admire the strength of her character, of her beautiful mind, experience her transformation, coming into her own. The chance to feel her against me, taste her, and ruin her in the best way possible.

My cock tents against the towel, a soft breeze brushing against it, and I shake my head at the reaction. It’s not as involuntary as I would like to believe. Not when it happens every single fucking time I think of Evelyn. It’s been going on for weeks, maybe months. Like some teenage goddamn crush or something.

I swipe a hand over my face when I fully acknowledge the word I spoke in my mind—crush.

I’m a twenty-nine year old man… with a crush.

God save me because I’m fucked.

* * *

I didn’t make a decision by the time I reached Evelyn’s apartment building. But the look in her eyes when she left Vin’s house kept resurfacing in my mind, and the nagging sensation that I could be right was agonizing.

Time to find out.

The Sanctum’s security is stationed in and around this building too, at Vin’s insistence of course, since Morrigan spends a lot of time at her apartment here. I think Madds might have had a say in this too, as he seems oddly focused on the owner of the building—Loreley—though he would never admit it.

One of the guys lets me in and I head straight up to the first floor, my knuckles against the door before my feet halt. Too many moments pass, and just when I’m about to knock again, the door opens.

“Well, hello there.”

“Mamaw June,” I exclaim, surprised. “Hello.”

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