Page 37 of Where We Ended

“Tell you what?” I stretched out, wearing just my boxers, while I stared at the ceiling. The lights were off, so just the fragments of light from outside filtered in. She crawled in next to me, so I began stroking her back. I tried to imagine us in a different life. One where I’d snuck into Natty’s window, her loving family asleep but protective of her. Her going to high school like a normal seventeen-year-old. Me following her through the halls, obsessed with her. Her dad warning me off. Her mom loving me, sneaking me dinner before Natty’s dad came home from work.

I gave the ceiling a sad smile.

Her fingers brushed over my neck. “Tell me why you chose crucifixion. I know you, Silas. There’s a reason you chose it.”

“What if I chose it because I’m sick and twisted inside?”

She hummed, caressing my jaw. “Perhaps, but I think there’s something else.”

It was a waste of our time pretending, so I filled my chest with air and then let it all out, praying she’d still want me once I spilled my truth.

“I didn’t want them to die. The gun to the head would have killed them faster, but they’d still die. The knives would have only been allowed if they’d passed from the blood loss. Every option my father presented ended in death. I thought of something, anything that would be so outrageous that my father would leave it alone. I couldn’t imagine how badly it would hurt to be nailed to a piece of wood, but in the end, after I came back and let them down, they’d still have their lives. I should have known my father better…after the first few that I’d done, he’d patted me on the back. I walked away, setting a timer on my phone for when I could circle back, but he called me back to finish it.”

It was a cruel joke.

A fucking test.

But Fable had been so thrilled, so fucking excited.

“My father loved the new tactic so much, he started giving me more people to target. I began crucifying my father’s enemies, and in doing so, I became The Roman.”

A tear from Natty’s cheek slid against my chest as she whispered, “Tantum tenebris.”

So much darkness.

I felt my own eyes begin to burn as the reality of how my life had changed, set in. How I’d been forced to become a murderer. An executioner. Now I had this perfectly pure person next to me, and she was seeing all of it. One day there would be someone better, someone whole, and they would show her that this life we lived was fucked up.

Her body moved closer, her hand wrapping around mine until she was pulling it up to her lips. “You belong to me, Silas Silva. No matter what you do, no matter how he tries to indoctrinate you with his darkness, at your core, you’re pure light. I’ll be here reminding you of that for as long as you want me.”

A tear slipped down the side of my face as I tried to swallow past the lump in my throat.

Eventually I was able to say the only thing I could think of.

“Forever, Caelum. I’ll want you for that long, and then longer when the devil demands my soul.”

She kissed my chest. “He can’t have what belongs to me.”

ELEVEN

NATTY

PRESENT

Something had changed.

It was as if the air in the room had suddenly been sucked out…it started with the low rumble outside, which had me quickly sitting up in bed and searching for the source. Alec was asleep next to me, his hand still cuffed to mine.

For what felt like the thousandth time, I tried squeezing out of the metal restraint. My wrist was raw and red from how many times I’d tried to slide it free; it wasn’t budging but with him asleep, I had to keep trying. I had to do something…maybe I could try suffocating him, or hit him so hard in the dick, he couldn’t breathe.

But it all still left me with the issue of being chained to a man that easily weighed two hundred pounds with his height and all that stacked muscle. There was no universe in which I could drag his dead weight around with me.

The rumble came again, this time there were shouts going off outside. Then gunfire.

Hope soared as I searched the clouded windows for any indication on what might be happening, because opposition could mean a rescue. Alec finally woke up and realized his little hiding place was under attack, so he pulled me off the bed and briskly walked to the door. I trailed him, still in just his shirt, nothing under it, my feet bare and my hair wild.

“What the fuck is happening?” he bellowed as he thundered down the hall. With his bare chest, his boxers and all the ink on his skin, he looked like an angry god. It was early enough that light flooded the halls and the dining room.

The rumble of motorcycles echoed louder than before outside, which had me turning toward the windows but Alec yanked me into the kitchen.

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