Page 151 of Underground Prince

“Then why have us suffer? How could you just give up?”

“Because you will live without me. We have to live for each other. I won’t stand for the next moment your life is at risk because the Saxons know your name. Trace is still out there. He escaped. Jumped onto a waiting boat and nearly killed himself leaping from the docks…but now my family wants my blood. And they can have it, because they will not satisfy themselves with yours.”

“It’s because of me they think you betrayed them. You shouldn’t be punished for my mistakes.”

“Cops were only a matter of time,” he said, stroking my hair. “You didn’t orchestrate the setup, become a mole in the organization, plot against my brother for years. Circumstance doesn’t always merit punishment.”

“But this is the ultimate price. You want to step out of my life.”

“I believe we were meant to meet. But I can’t accept that you belong in this world of mine.”

I opened my mouth to deny.

“They’ll come for you.” His touch left my face and cold, sterile air lifted his words. “If I’m still around, they will want nothing more than to teach me a lesson in death. But if I go to them, repent, they’ll leave you alone.”

“You can’t,” I said. “That would kill you. You aren’t like them.”

“I’ll bide my time. There will come one second when I can cross them, and believe me, I’ll take it.”

There was no correct choice. A winning side did not exist. It was simply him and me, surviving in a universe that wanted us apart. Two stars, glowing their existence, with one meant to burn up before the other.

“I’m with you,” Theo said, rising.

I held onto him, an instant surge to keep him here.

He curved down, molding his lips to mine and kissing me like he was dying.

“I am.” His voice, rough with regret and determination, sounded into my mouth.

“I’ll find you,” I said. “I swear on everything I am, I will not live the rest of my life without you.”

At last, his smile breached our grief. “You never could back down, could you?” He kissed my forehead. “You’ll never find me.”

Theo backed away, regarding me as though he was instilling every aspect of my features into his mind. He started to say—

“Don’t,” I said. “Don’t you dare.”

This was not a time for final declarations. It would be a curse, to say something so tremendous that it would cement the fact this was the last time I’d see him. I wouldn’t allow him that kind of final good-bye or the excuse that he’d said all he wanted before he left me forever.

He listened. “Good-bye, Scarlet.”

“Until next time,” I said. And I meant it.

Theo left the room, not looking back, because if he did, he’d have to witness me, vanishing, losing muscle mass, bones breaking, blood turning to saltwater as I cried the loss of him into the spread of my tears.

31

HEAL

Night fell after the next day, as lightly as the blankets across me.

The doctor had come and gone, explaining my injuries, or my “ballistic trauma,” as his clipped tone and clipboard explained. Turns out, killing someone with a gun isn’t that cut and dried. In order to succeed, the brain, heart, or major blood vessel had to be involved. Trace shot at my torso, the bullet breaking through my abdominal wall but missing my liver, spleen, kidneys, and other life-sustaining organs.

This did nothing to lesson the pain, as Dr. Soronsen explained. Many nerves were nestled where the bullet penetrated, and one of my ribs was cracked, thus the constant battle I faced by staying conscious and handling the agony.

It was harder to cry this way, when it was impossible to curl onto my side and allow the pillow to catch my tears. Comfort came when knees were brought to the chest, folding over and holding oneself, sobbing into the softness of cotton. Here, splayed out, exposed, I could do no such thing. Soaking my temples, hair, and ears, feeling the chill of my tears before the sticky dryness took over, was not solace.

My parents wouldn’t tell me enough information, worrying for my psyche after such extreme trauma. Heal first, they said. Get stronger. Then we’ll tell you everything you want to know. Yet the ignorance, the deliberate veiling of information, was killing me.

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