Page 42 of Say You're Mine

Chapter thirteen

June

I'm drowning in a sea of agony, every nerve ending screaming as the machine tears into my mind, ripping and shredding, seeking the most tender places to sink its claws. I try to focus on Cara, on the sweet balm of her smile, the honeyed warmth of her eyes, but even those precious memories are tainted now, twisted into grotesque mockeries by Faulkner's insidious manipulations.

Cara's face looms before me, but it's wrong, distorted, a cruel caricature of the woman I love. Her eyes are black, soulless pits, her grin a razor-slash of malice. "You're nothing, June," she hisses, her voice dripping with venom. "A pathetic, broken toy for me to play with until I tire of you. Did you really think I could ever love a worthless piece of shit like you?"

I try to shake my head, to deny the poisonous lies spilling from her lips, but I'm paralyzed, helpless, trapped in this nightmare of Faulkner's making. The doubts that he's planted take root, insidious tendrils burrowing deep, wrapping around my heart and squeezing until I can't breathe.

Maybe she's right. Maybe I am nothing, nobody, just a plaything for the rich and powerful to use and discard at their whim. Maybe Cara never loved me at all, maybe our life together was just a beautiful, terrible lie...

But then, through the haze of pain and despair, I feel it. The gentlest brush of warmth, of light, against the tattered edges of my psyche. A presence that I would know anywhere, in this life or the next.

"June." Her voice is a whisper, an ember glowing in the darkness. "June, my love. I'm here."

"Cara?" It takes everything I have to shape her name, to push it past the knot of anguish in my throat. "Is it... are you real?"

"Shhh." Her touch ghosts over my brow, soothing the fevered ache. "Don't try to talk. Just listen. Just feel. This isn't real, June. What they're showing you, the doubts they're forcing on you - it's all poison, all lies."

I want it to be true. I want to believe in her, in us, with every fractured shard of my being. But the roots of Faulkner's deception run so deep, the taint of it festering in my very marrow.

"How do I know this isn't a trick too?" The anguished rasp of my voice is a foreign thing, broken and bleeding. "Another mind game, another way to break me?"

There's an aching tenderness in her gaze as she leans in close, her lips a hairsbreadth from mine. "Remember our first kiss?" she breathes, and it's like every molecule in my body strains toward the honeyed warmth of her. "Remember how it felt like coming home, like finding a piece of yourself you never knew was missing? Remember what you said to me after, with the stars caught in my hair and your heart in your eyes?"

And I do. God, I do. It washes over me in a wave of sense-memory so vivid, so intense, it's like I'm there again, drowning in the jasmine of her perfume and the taste of forever on her lips.

"I will love you," I whisper, the words tearing out of me on a sob, "until the stars burn out and the universe goes cold. I will fight for you, bleed for you, die for you, and count myself lucky. Because you, Cara Briers, are my heaven, my hope, the very best part of me."

Her smile is incandescent, blinding, a supernova bursting to life in the void. "That's it, June. That's the truth they can never take from us. No matter what they do, no matter how hard they try to break you - I will always be yours, and you will always be mine. Unshakeable, unbreakable, bound in love and blood and the promise of a thousand lifetimes."

She kisses me then, and it sears through me like wildfire, burning away the fog of Faulkner's lies, the insidious coils of doubt and despair. In this stolen heartbeat, in this fragile eternity carved out of nightmare, there is only her. Only us. Only the bond forged in adversity and tempered in devotion, the unbreakable thread of our souls.

And along with the pure, singing joy of it, there kindles a darker flame. An ember of rage, of righteous fury, glowing white-hot in the crucible of my heart.

How dare they. How fucking dare they try to take this from me, from us. This shining, sacred thing, this love that has moved mountains and rewritten the laws of gravity. I have ripped out men's throats for daring to bruise her skin, burned cities to ash for the crime of making her cry. I have stormed the gates of Hell and looked the devil in his eyes, and I would do it all again, a thousand times over, without hesitation.

Because she is everything. The beat of my heart, the breath in my lungs, the keystone of my existence. And I will fight for her, kill for her, paint the fucking streets red with the blood of any fool who seeks to part us.

"Cara." My voice is stronger now, edged in steel and brimstone. "Cara, my valkyrie, my northern star. I need you to do something for me."

"Anything." There's no reluctance, no fear in her. Only faith, pure and shining. "For you, June, anything."

I cup her face in my hands, memorizing every beloved curve and angle. "I need you to step back. Just for a moment, just long enough for me to do what needs to be done. I don't... I can't let you see me like this. Like the monster they've forced me to become."

Her eyes blaze, incandescent with love and fury. "You could never be a monster, not to me. You're a warrior, a knight in blood-stained armor. My savior, my strength, my heart walking outside my body. And there is no part of you, no piece of your soul, that I will ever turn away from."

Tears sting my eyes, gratitude and adoration a living thing in my chest. "I love you," I whisper, the words an oath, a covenant. "In this life, the next, and every one beyond. Always, only, forever yours."

"And I you." She leans in, her lips a sweet benediction on my brow. "Go now, my love. Do what you must. And know that I am with you, every step, in every beat of your heart."

I nod, letting her presence, her love, fill me up, shore up all the broken places. A deep breath, a squaring of the shoulders, and she fades like mist beneath the morning sun.

But I carry her with me, an ember glowing bright and fierce in my soul. Drawing strength from the memory of her smile, her touch, the stubborn tilt of her chin that means she's ready to take on the world.

Cara believes in me. In us. In the love that has carried us through the crucible again and again, forging us into something unbreakable. And for her, for the family we've built from blood and tears and desperate defiance...

I will unleash Hell itself.

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