Page 26 of All Hallows Game

The only thing she held was her phone and the knife. I sighed, fighting back another wave of anger. “And you couldn’t get it because you were followed. Tell me where it is, little bride, and I’ll go get it for you.”

“No,” she said too quickly, a flash of panic in her eyes that had answering panic clenching my stomach. She wouldn’t meet my eyes even when I stood in front of her, even when I knelt before her.

“What’s going on?” I asked as gently as I could, a pain cinching my chest. Why would Cat be sneaking into a campus building under cover of darkness?

“Please don’t ask,” she breathed.

I moulded my hand to her cheek, my heart cracking when she leaned into the touch, her eyes falling shut, creased with pain. I prayed Tor was right in thinking he could win her affection back, because in that moment with her arching into my touch like she was starved of it, I knew I couldn’t let her go. But there was no having me without having Misery and Torment, too.

“I need you to tell me, Cat, or I can’t help you.”

“You can’t help me anyway,” she said without opening her eyes. There were shadows around them, and exhaustion cut into her face, lining the slouch of her body. “No one can. But I—I think I can do it. I know I can.”

I didn’t like the sound of that at all. Cat sneaking around at night, keeping secrets, unable to tell me what she was doing… it had the hallmarks of Nightmare all over it.

Fuck it.

I rose from the floor and sat beside her, pulling her onto my lap. I had to bite back a groan at how fucking perfect she felt, but this wasn’t about what I wanted, this was about comforting my girl when she was obviously shaken.

I needed to stop calling her my girl. I didn’t even know what we were. Not together, not the way we were. She wasn’t my bride. But she was my friend, and I could hug my friends, right?

“You don’t have to stay, I’ll be fine,” she murmured, but she rested her head on my chest and the way she softened in my hold told me she needed this. Needed me.

“I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what’s wrong. Why were you out so late? You could have been hurt, little bride. What if the animal that killed your therapist followed you?”

She shivered, and I regretted scaring her more, but if Nightmare had gotten to her, if the goddess was making her break into locked buildings at night, we had a bigger problem than monsters.

“I needed to find something,” she answered after a long pause, her hands knitted together in her lap. “For a friend.”

“Not your laptop.”

“No,” she whispered. “I don’t like lying to you but I—it needs to be a secret. I’m sorry.”

I tightened my arms around her, sighing deeply, and pulled her peaches and cream scent into my lungs on my next inhale. I missed her so fucking much. Even with her in my arms, I wanted her closer, wanted everything. Which should have told me enough about my feelings for her, but the doubts lingered.

“I don’t like secrets, Cat,” I murmured, my heart fluttering when she pressed her face into my chest, the very tips of her fingers curling into the ragged black T-shirt I wore to garden in. I ought to have put on something more appropriate to meet a beautiful woman—my beautiful woman, my soul cried in defiance—than a holey shirt and black sweatpants, but I hadn’t exactly been thinking straight. And she needed me.

I dared to kiss the top of her head. “Please tell me.”

“I can’t,” she insisted, her voice thick, strangled. “I want to, but I can’t tell you. I won’t.”

I recoiled. Right. We weren’t together anymore, weren’t anything but friends, and clearly, I wasn’t the kind of friend she confessed all her fears to.

It hurt, more than I would have expected.

“I would start and end wars to keep you safe,” I breathed, the truth slipping free without my permission. “I would do anything to ease your mind.”

Cat peered up at me, blinking back a silver sheen of tears. So beautiful, so sad, so—alone. She looked lonely, and I only recognised it because I saw the expression so often in Miz. Two of the people I loved were suffering, and both refused to let me in. How could I help them when they’d built a brick wall around themselves?

I shouldn’t have done it. I knew that the moment I cupped her face, my thumb stroking her cheek. I knew it when I dipped my head, knew it when she tipped her face up towards me, a plea in pale grey eyes. It would end in disaster and heartbreak but that didn’t stop me kissing her.

It wasn’t enough. A single press, a simple brush of her lips on mine, the softness of her both welcome and painful.

I would have withdrawn after that simple touch, but the desperate sound in Cat’s throat convinced me to stay, to give her more. I decided to give her everything the second she twisted on my lap to straddle me, her fingers hooking in my worn shirt.

She kissed me with a ferocity and need that made my blood catch fire. I squeezed her hip, dragging her flush to me as she caught my bottom lip in her teeth, not asking for more or even demanding it, but taking it for herself. The second her taste exploded on my tongue, I was gone, a deep groan in the back of my throat and my cock hard in an instant.

“Please,” she gasped into my mouth, arching into my body as she kissed me hard and deep. “Please don’t ask for answers I can’t give. Just—this. Please.”

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