Page 12 of Cast Stones
Toward freedom.
Away from me.
I died so she could live. I died to repent.Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.
“She’s the one, ain’t she, boy?”
“No, sir.”
But the eyes are the window to the soul. They don’t lie.
Even when I carried her limp body into that church of evil, she was mine. They could do what they wanted to her body, but her soul was mine. It filled the holes in my heart created when the evil was burned into me.
By a life of darkness. Born into rain and flooded by storm.
“I died,” I chuckle at her words. “Toyou, yes. Isn’t that what you wanted at our beginning?”
“No. Yes. I don’t—” Shaken, she not only brushes that chunk of hair out of her face, but she bunches it in her hand and closes her eyes. “Why, Luca? Why did you come back?”
“Don’t play dumb with me,cara mia. It doesn’t suit you.”
Her eyes pop open. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I came back for you. I’m here…” Shaking my arms, I rattle the chains binding me as a warm trickle of blood drips toward my elbow. “Because ofyou.”
She shakes her head violently, barely holding it together. “You’re here because of what you’ve done. You know I’m the best in the state. I’m the only chance you have.”
I laugh. For her. For me. For this fucked-up situation. For the kids we were and the adults we’ve become. But mostly, I laugh for the nightmare we’ll never escape from. “WhatI’vedone. Tell me,Madigan Bailey. Have you looked in the mirror lately?”
Chapter Five
One Month Later
“My only lovesprung from my only hate.”
That’s what Shakespeare wrote inRomeo and Juliet.
I used to think that Luca and I were lovers like that: divided by circumstance, yet somehow connected by all our messy flaws and contradictions. He was the black-eyed boy, and I, his blonde captive. He knew only darkness and solitude. I knew crappy first dates, movie theaters, and broken curfews. He kidnapped me and tormented my young mind because they told him to, but somewhere between the ages of sixteen and eighteen, he loved me whole again. He conditioned me for my indoctrination into the Divine Disciples of God, the cult he’d been born into—the only thing he knew—but in the end, it was he who gave me the courage to resist it.
Hate.
I hate him for crashing back into my life like this.
Love.
Not us. Not anymore. We turned to ash the day he died.
Only he didn’t die, and now I’m back feeling the invisible pull between us whenever I step into that room in Broward County Jail.
I’d damn him to hell if I didn’t think he was there already.
I’ve been living a survivor’s purgatory ever since, but it’s beenmyexistence to squander. It sounds perverse, but I welcome my lack of friends, my estranged family, and even all the shitty names my colleagues call me because they’remychoices. I’vechosento accept the way things are.
This is what Luca excels at:taking all my choices away from me. Once again, he’s twisted our fates together like poisonous vines. He knows I’d never let him willingly expose the horrors of my past, so I’m in the fight of my life to set him free.
Rubbing my eyes, I stifle a yawn.
“You’re the last in the office again tonight, Bailey.”
