Page 173 of Under an Endless Moon

Raven’s brow pinched, and she shifted so she could peer up at me. It sent the water sloshing around us. “How could you think I would ever want to distance myself from you? From my brother? From the rest?”

She made it sound like it’d be a betrayal.

My thumb stroked her cheek. “Because then you’d be safe.”

“I don’t want to be safe if it means being separated from the ones I love. From my family.”

Pain splintered through me. That old grief that had always made me terrified of getting too close. Terrified of loving. Terrified of the idea of losing someone I cared about more than life all over again.

Certain if it happened again, I would never survive it.

“You’ve always said you’d be willing to fight for me. Die for me. For all of us.” Raven’s words filled with urgency.

“Of course.” That went without question.

“Do you know so little about me that you would think I wouldn’t sacrifice the same?”

A swell of protectiveness tumbled through my guts, and my hand twitched where I set it on her face. “I’m not worth that kind of sacrifice.”

Whatever my fate was going to be, I had it coming to me.

I didn’t want her anywhere near it. Fucked up considering I didn’t think there was a chance I could let her go.

Something passed through her features. Something haunted. Ghosts that swept through that ink-stained gaze. “I’ve always been willing to fight for you.”

“But that’s supposed to be my job.”

“No, that is supposed to go both ways. Caring and loving and protecting. It can’t be one-sided, or it will never work,” she argued.

The quiet settled around us for a moment, her words weaving and winding, searching for a way to penetrate. To find a way to seep through the cracks whittled in the broken places inside me.

“Do you want that, Otto? A family?” she finally asked through the thick air.

Trepidation hammered through me, spirit clutching in a vise of regret. Part of me wanted to keep it locked inside, but I found myself admitting, “Tried to be that for Haddie and it didn’t turn out so great.”

Sorrow rolled. It’d become a taboo subject between us. Words left unspoken. But I wasn’t sure we could maintain that any longer when we were this close.

Raven barely shook her head on my chest, her wordsso quiet I could hardly hear them. “She was amazing, Otto. The kindest, most genuine best friend I could have asked for. And so much of that was because of you.”

Grief cut through me. A dull, bitter blade. “She’s gone because of me.”

“She got caught up. Made mistakes like we all do. That doesn’t make someone a bad person. The only bad people are the ones who stole her from us.” A tremor rolled through her, dark and ugly, palpable in our connection.

I wondered if there was a chance that she hated them as badly as I did.

If she’d understand what I had to do.

If she’d accept the resentment I still bore at the fact that I hadn’t been the one to be able to end them all.

“Did it so wrong.” It scraped out of me.

Her fingers drifted over my pecs. “They’re the ones who incited it all. They’re the monsters.”

But she didn’t know it all. My retaliation that had cost everything.

A stupid fucking choice. A bomb dropped, and I hadn’t been able to stop the fallout.

“You were fighting for us all along,” she added.

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