Page 20 of Mine to Take

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

KRISTEN

I knew it was bad when Max walked into my kitchen with a bottle of bourbon, gallon of ice cream and margherita pizza from Vinnie’s.

“It’s happening.” I said flatly.

He just nodded.

“I have no idea how I’m going to survive this,” I looked at him. Standing here in my kitchen, where a few weeks ago Farid had been wrapped around me, nuzzling my neck, harassing me for giving him an Israeli disguise. It was the tiniest glimpse of the normal life we would never have. I already felt dead inside.

Max’s phone buzzed and we both stared. I was torn between wanting to know nothing and everything.

“I’ll give you the play-by-play if you want,” Max said. “I honestly don’t know how to help you here. But I didn’t want you to hear it on news, nor did I want you alone when you found out.”

I just nodded.

“He’s different than I expected him to be,” Max said it like an apology.

“How so?”

“I don’t really know, he’s just more…”

“Human?” I interjected.

Max smiled slightly. “Yes, I guess that’s it. His reputation…he never did anything to discourage it.”

“He told me he thought it benefitted him to be feared, gave him power he thought he needed, thought his dad would be proud of.”

Max nodded again, conceding that made some sense.

“I never saw the monster,” I said staring out the window. “I only saw a man.”

His phone buzzed again multiple times.

“They just flew across the border,” he said quietly.

I grabbed the bourbon, poured him a glass and put a death grip on the bottle for me.

A couple of hours passed. I paced. Max sat.

Then a ping. I knew this was it. He looked at the message, hung his head and then looked at me.

He swooped in and grabbed me before I hit the floor.

My moods ping-ponged from crushing grief, to anger, to guilt that none of this would have happened had it not been for me, more anger, sadness and finally complete and total emptiness.

I was desperate to fill my head with visions of his smile, the way his whispers against my neck shot shivers through my body, his fingers deep inside of me, those lips on my throat. I needed every memory every feeling, every sensation. Clinging to them was all I had and I suddenly felt like they might vanish with him.

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