Page 113 of As the World Falls

I stop moving in my tracks, my grip tightening on her. “I didn’t leave you an invite, Cecilia.”

“Yeah, I realized that once I came. You were pretty occupied with your date,” she sneers. Fuck, this woman was going to give me whiplash. As much as I wanted to focus on her newfound jealousy, I needed to put all the puzzle pieces into place before I lost my shit.

“Baby, who left you an invite? Tell me now,” I choke out.

She sighs. “It was Chuck. That’s why it looked like I was his date. He tricked me, and I got nervous with everyone’s eyes on me. I didn’t know what to do, so I stood by him and regretted it as soon as I did. I should have just run off, but they shut the doors on me and?—

“Excuse me,” I murmur, enraged, turning to look through the sea of people. I lift my head to the crowd around us, my gaze snapping everywhere, looking for the bloody dead man. I swear I was going to kill him once I got my hands on him finally. She wasrambling, and I hated him even more for making her anxious. Tricking her like this and making her scared in front of people when it was the complete opposite of her personality made me want to commit murder; damn the consequences. He was pushing the wrong fucking buttons here. Leaving her an invite after I’d already warned him what I would do was him officially signing his death certificate. I was going to make him pay for every move he’d cast against me by using her.

Instead, I feel her tug on my arm, pulling me back into place and wrapping her arms tighter around me. “No. You’re not going anywhere,” she says sternly. I look down at her as she scowls at me, and I can’t help but be enraptured by her. Staring into her eyes could make me forget who I was altogether. In fact, it already has.

“What is it you want from me?” I ask, taking her into my arms again as another song starts. “You make no sense, showing up here like this and making me want to fall to my knees at your feet.”

She lets out a small sigh and looks away from me now. “I think part of me needed to know if you’d moved on already.”

I tilt my head in confusion. “Moved on?”

“With the woman you came with. Yesterday, she was at the house, trying on dresses, and you were looking at her, and then …you went upstairs. Did she follow you up there? Because if you slept with her, then?—”

“I love you,” I murmur, interrupting her. Her eyes widen in shock to the point where the blues are almost all I can see behind her mask. “I can’t move on. I never will move on because I love you, Cecilia. I am in love with you. Frighteningly so. You haunt my thoughts and possess my heart. You could destroy me and everything I am, and I’d still love you as the world falls. So no, Cecilia. I have not moved on.”

She swallows hard, and I can feel her hands shaking as they rest on the back of my neck. “But these last couple of days, you’ve been so…angry with me.”

“In an attempt to not love you but fuck, I can’t not be. Look at you,” I say, gesturing to her ensemble tonight. “You dance like magic. You look like magic. How could I not worship you?” She laughs softly, and it sounds watery. I notice then that her eyes are filled with unshed tears. I cup her face, the diamond tassels on her mask hanging over my hands. “Let me love you, my Cecilia,” I whisper to her.

She nods, barely, but she does, and it’s like my chest explodes. It feels hot and anxious, and I can’t do anything but drop my mouth to hers and taste her again like I’ve been dreaming about since the last time I did. Her mouth meets mine with the same urgency, and it's like the night sky around us starts spinning. It was too good. This had to be a dream.

Our masks clash against each other, so I pull away, ripping mine from my face and tossing it to the floor. She does the same before pulling me back to her. She kisses me again and again. I didn’t care who could see us or that our identities were exposed. She was mine, and I wanted them all to see it.

“Go home with me,” I groan into her.

“To your room?”

“To my room. In my bed. In my arms.”

“Okay,” she whispers. I grin, taking her chin between my thumb and index finger and kissing her once more. I open my eyes a second before pulling away from her, and my gaze lands on Tobias over her shoulder. His head tilts nearly ninety degrees as he spots us.

“Shit,” I mumble. Cecilia looks over her shoulder, following my gaze. I can see the anger wash over him, darkening his gaze as he recognizes her and comes barreling toward us. I wasn’t scared of him, but I didn’t want to upset him, and I knew thiswas one outcome that he didn’t want for his sister. But he’d just have to accept the fact that if I didn’t have her, I’d probably just go crazy and kill everyone around me for existing in my agony.

He reaches us, his arm wrapping around hers and pulling her back from me. “What the hell?—”

He doesn’t get a chance to finish his sentence because gunshots ring out around us. One shot. Two shots.

Then chaos ensues.

I look back toward them as everyone begins stampeding around us, making their way to the exit. Tobias tugs Cecilia behind him, blocking her with his body as he looks around us, trying to spot the shooter.

“Get her out of here,” I yell to him. My heart is racing, and all I can think about is that she needs to be outside this building in one piece in less than thirty seconds, or I will lose my mind.

He begins moving with everyone, pulling her with him as we force our way through. “James,” she shouts, reaching for me.

“Keep moving. Get yourself out of here,” I yell to her.

Two men stop us in our tracks, holding their guns out to face us. They wore masks resembling ugly brown goblin faces with long, pointed horns on each side. Everything is moving so fast that I don’t get a second to think as one of them backhands me with the barrel of the gun. I fall to my knees just as I hear Cecilia scream in horror. I look over my shoulder, seeing her lunge from behind her brother. I look forward again, seeing the other man hold his gun up toward her, and I leap to my feet. The first guy in front of me comes at me again, but Tobias overtakes him, knocking him out cold.

I reach the other man just as he pulls his trigger, knocking his arm up to the ceiling and firing the bullet into the air. He brings his other elbow down on me in the process and then presses the gun into my right shoulder, firing a shot through it. I groan in pain as it feels like fire rips through my body, but I don’t let itstop me. All I can see is red. All I can think is what I would have done if that first bullet hit her. All I can do is rage.

I grab hold of his arm, twisting it so violently hard, a move he didn’t anticipate, considering I’d just been shot. Thankfully adrenaline is a thing because he cripples down on his knees in pain, and the gun falls from his hand. I pick it up, firing a shot right into his skull.

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