Page 16 of Slay Bells Ring

The way she glares at me tells me I struck a nerve. Her lips curl into a pout. The way the light from the fire dances across her skin, she looks like she belongs on a beach somewhere, not trapped in a cabin while snow falls soundlessly outside.

With a shrug, she says, “I just thought you’d be more impressive, that’s all.”

I drop the wrapper of the granola bar as I stand, giving her full view of my height—for someone who’s barely over five feet tall, she has absolutely no right to look at me and tell me I’m not impressive. “Excuse me?”

She offhandedly gestures to my standing figure. “Is this posturing supposed to do something to me? Make me cower? Make me rethink what I said before and tell you that you’re the epitome of a dangerous assassin? Please.”

“I could kill you in over a dozen different ways in less than five seconds.”

“Maybe, but you’re not, just like you didn’t back then, so…” She shrugs.

I’d be lying if I say I’m not irritated. Somehow she pushed my buttons and made me annoyed—and I never let myself get riled up. There are a few things I could tell her right then, but all I end up doing is huffing and sitting back down.

Minutes pass. Or, hell, maybe even longer than that. Anyway, it’s a long while before I ask, “How’d you find out who I am?”

“Like I’m going to tell you my sources. Let’s just say anything’s possible when you have money and you try hard enough.” This time, it’s Holly who gives me a smirk, like she knows she’s somehow found her way beneath my skin.

“Most people would never be able to find out my name, let alone track me down to a cabin like this. Your murdering skills might need some work, little killer, but you are resourceful, I’ll give you that.”

If looks could kill, well, I would’ve been a goner a long time ago. I can see it in her eyes: she’s imagining all the ways she wants to kill me. Holly is full of hate and rage for what I took from her thirteen years ago, and I can’t blame her one bit for any of it. She is the person she is today because of me, because of what I took from her.

Maybe it’s my guilt over that night, or maybe it’s just the look she’s giving me. Either way, I grab my bottle and take another sip before I mutter, “You weren’t supposed to be there that night. The job was your parents. They were the only ones who were supposed to be in that cabin. Not you.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” When I don’t say anything more, Holly sighs. “They were going to leave me behind, but Stacy, our au pair, got sick. I was secretly glad she got sick, because it would’ve been the first Christmas we didn’t spend together as a family.”

I can’t say I ever had anything like that. I meant it when I said the Guild was my whole life; holidays, birthdays, all that crap was just that: crap. Days full of fluff and no substance that made you soft.

Then again, look at where I am now. I got soft anyway, thanks to the girl on the damn sofa bed.

Holly goes on, totally unaware I’m trapped inside my own head, “Christmas used to be my favorite time of year. Obviously, the presents were high on the list, but everything else… there’s nothing like it when you’re a kid. The time off school, the decorations, the movies, the cookies. It really is magical, and since you’re just a kid, you think it’ll always be like that, but it’s not.”

Her voice hardens as she says, “You killed that joy in me, Kane. You killed it when you killed my parents, whenyou opened that closet door and pointed a gun at my face. You killed everything I was.”

She turns her face away from me so I can’t look at her, and her hair falls across her cheek to further hide her face. “Not that I expect you to care. Monsters like you never care about anything.”

Her words cut me like knives, and I want nothing more than to get up and shut myself away in that bedroom. Put some distance between us so I don’t have to hear the way her voice cracks when she talks about her childhood innocence and hope and how I took it from her that night. I don’t want to hear her go on and on about how I destroyed her, annihilated everything she was.

I don’t want to hear it. I already know.

Of course I know. This whole time I knew. That has to be why I couldn’t get rid of this nagging feeling the past thirteen years, why her face and those green eyes haunted my dreams. My emotions were supposed to be turned off, but that night she shocked them back into place and after thirteen years I couldn’t ignore them any longer.

“For what little it’s worth, I am sorry for what I did to you,” I whisper, knowing it’s not enough. Words will never be enough. Such is their burden.

“If you’re so sorry, come over here, hand me my knife, and let me try again.”

Even though the situation is solemn and the weight of the air around us is heavy, I find myself smirking. “I’m afraid I can’t do that. If you want to kill me, you’ll have to put in the work. I won’t make it easy for you.”

The sigh she lets out after that tells me she suspected that would be my answer. “Is that why you cut your old man beard off?”

Out of everything she could’ve said, that’s something I don’t expect to hear, and I laugh softly in spite of myself. I lift a hand to my cheek and run my fingertips along the stubble. The knife could only cut so close, but it did its job.

“Old man beard?” I echo. “I think that hurts me more than the knife in the chest.”

Holly groans. “Come on. It was an old man beard. All long and scraggly. You looked like you hadn’t seen a mirror in months.”

“And now?” I don’t know why I ask. I probably shouldn’t, but once the question is out of me, it’s out and there’s no taking it back.

Her eyes drop to my jawline, and Holly studies me in an intensely scrutinizing way. “You look more like the man I remember—but way older, obviously. You’re an old man without the beard now.” She takes so long to respond it makes me wonder if there’s more she wants to say that she held in.

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