Page 94 of I Am Salvation

She scoffs. “You know something, Dragon? I wasn’t sure I could tell you this. I’m not sure you’re ready to hear it. But I’m done giving a damn.” She closes her eyes for a moment, draws in a breath. Then she opens them and rises into a sitting position, her leg still elevated on the pillow.

She meets my gaze.

Her brown eyes are on fire.

“I’ve got something to say to you, and you’re going to sit here and listen to it.”

Fuck. I just told her I didn’t want to talk about my mother. I don’t really want to talk about Griffin right now either.

What the hell else could she possibly have to say?

I rub my forehead, push a stray piece of hair out of my eyes.

“Fine. What is it?”

“All right.” She swallows. “I’m just going to go right ahead and say it.”

“You don’t see me stopping you.” I sit down on the side of the bed.

Silence.

More silence.

Until finally?—

“I love you, Dragon.”

My body goes cold.

She didn’t just say that. Did she?

No one has ever said those words to me. Not since I was barely nine years old.

And I didn’t last hear them from my mother or my father.

No.

I last heard them from Griffin. My little sister. The little sister who adored me. Every time she put on those jammies and went to bed, she would come give me a hug and a kiss on my cheek. A slobbery five-year-old kiss that I would immediately wipe off.

Then she’d say, “I love you, Dragon.”

And I would say “I love you too, Griffin.”

She’d scramble off to bed, my mother following her, where she would read Griffin a story, and then lights out.

I love you, Dragon.

I hear the words in her little five-year-old voice.

Except it wasn’t Griffin who said them.

It was Diana.

Diana’s sweet and sultry voice.

Diana…who I love right back.

“You don’t have to say it back,” she says. “But you do need to acknowledge that I said it.”

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