Page 112 of Killer Kiss

But I didn’t have it in me. Shock had control of my body in a very real way, and now that I was somewhere safe, everything inside me felt like it was shutting down. My fear and grief and overwhelm had me in its grips, and I had nothing left to give, even to this man who’d given me so much.

The sound he made when he watched my sister fall was one I would never be able to erase from my memory. It was deep. Guttural. A cry of pain from a parent who had just lost their child. Or a brother who had just lost his sister.

Like the entire world had slowed, Augie slid to the floor, taking me with him, the two of us wrapped around each other, bound in our grief, too wrecked to say a word.

Hope disappeared.

Nothing mattered.

Fawn was dead.

31

AUGIE

Numbness crept in slowly.

In the hours Ophelia and I sat there in the dark, it slid over my body, a serpent, winding its way up my legs, over my torso and arms, until it settled around my neck like a noose, pulling tighter and tighter until it was all I knew.

For the longest time, neither of us moved, the only sounds of our breathing, her occasional sob, and the pounding of blood inside my body.

It reminded me I was still alive.

And how much I fucking hated that.

Because without Fawn here, what was the point?

“I don’t want to exist in a world she doesn’t,” I finally said into the quiet.

It was true. The darkness that had been creeping over me for months, ever since she’d disappeared, was a smothering fog now. It filled the room, squeezing out all the air, forcing its way into my throat and lungs in much the same way the smoke had.

Nothing good happened in Saint View. And I was part of why.

Darkness took everything I touched.

Everyone I loved.

Ophelia stared up at me with big, glassy eyes.

Whatever she saw in my expression changed hers. Determination came over her, and she crawled onto my lap, straddling me so we were eye to eye, cupping my face in her hands. “Yes, you do. You do want to be here, Aug. Because Banjo still exists in this world. And so does Luna.” She brushed her lips over mine, her voice dropping to a whisper. “So do I.”

She wiped her thumbs beneath my eyes, taking away tears I didn’t even know I was crying. When she kissed me again, her lips were salty and wet.

But she was warm.

She was real.

And she was here, in my lap, in my arms, begging me to stay.

In all the other times I’d felt like this, there’d never been her. It didn’t make the feeling go away. But it was nice to not be alone with it.

“I love you,” I whispered against her mouth, my hand twisting up into her hair, cradling her head.

I didn’t have pretty words. I didn’t have some big pre-prepared speech, the kind I knew she deserved.

But I never said those words.

Not to Banjo. Not to Fawn.

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