Page 84 of Splintered Memories
“It doesn’t hurt as much as I thought it would,” I confessed.
August pressed a kiss against my temple. “I’m glad.”
I rolled my lips, still not taking my eyes off the house.
Two weeks had passed since the Shadow Stalker was killed. A week and a half had passed since Alex Cohen was arrested for attempted murder. Finally.
The last weeks felt like both an eternity and a flash.
Jake had spent a few days in the hospital after we were rescued. He had been held captive since the Emberlight Festival. Amos took him after he had willingly given him the code to my security system. Thankfully, Amos hadn’t touched him much while he was held.
I had been worried for Jake at first, scared that the trauma would push him to old habits. It seemed to have the opposite effect, though. After Jake had gained his strength back, he was almost like a new person. He was working again and seemed like he was actually enjoying life. As if being in that hellhole had shown him how lucky he was to be alive and free.
I placed my hands over August’s. I had been doing surprisingly well too, considering everything. I had needed stitches on the cut Amos slashed into my thigh, but it was almost healed now.
It was still hard to comprehend that it wasn’t just August who’d saved me…but also my father. I still didn’t know how to process our relationship, but for once, we were building one. I didn’t see him often, but I was trying. Little by little, I was working through my complicated feelings about Tristan Hawthorn.
Apparently, my father had always known there was something off about his half-brother. He’d seen through the cracks when no one else did, and when he heard that he was the last person seen with me, he justknew.
He and August had arrived at my uncle’s isolated home in the hills outside of Ember Hollow and once Amos let them in, they took out their guns and demanded to be taken to me. Amos might’ve been a monster, but he hadn’t wanted to die. He had taken them to the room he’d built in his basement under the guise of a “panic room.”
He had used it to hold his victims before he killed them.
Some nights, I dreamt I was still there. Trapped.
I shivered, and August pulled me in closer.
“Tell me what’s going through that mind of yours,” he whispered in my ear.
August and I had grown closer these last weeks. He wasn’t my bodyguard anymore, but that didn’t keep me away from him. The two of us…we were held together by more than a simple contract.
“I’m thinking about everything that has happened,” I said, slowly. I still wasn’t used to speaking my true thoughts so freely, but August was gently encouraging me to open up as much as I was comfortable with.
“Do you care to be more specific?”
I let out a breath. “It feels like I should be more broken inside.” I tilted my head at my burned house. It would have to be rebuilt from the ground up. “I thought seeing my house would make me fall apart, but I’m not.”
August paused. “Is that a bad thing?” he asked with genuine curiosity.
I shook my head. “I don’t think so. I think…I think that everything that happened, happened for a reason.”
“And what reason is that?”
I turned in his arms. I gazed up into his gorgeous face. He gave me one of those sweet, easy smiles that turned my bones to jelly.
“I think it was all to lead me to you.”
August froze, and then his eyes widened. I laughed at his look of shock. “Don’t get me wrong.” I pressed my palm against his cheek. “It’s not all about you. But all of this…it has felt like a dismantling of a life that didn’t serve me. It’s the death of an old me so that I can rise up as a better version of myself.”
Heat flooded my cheeks as he continued to look at me with that dumbfounded expression. I glanced away. “Okay, maybe that sounded dumb, but it made sense in my head,” I grumbled.
August’s thumb hooked under my chin, and he gently turned my face back to his. His eyes had softened, that smile returning.
“That didn’t sound dumb.” He pressed a kiss against my forehead. “Should I start calling you my little phoenix now?” He raised a brow.
I frowned. “What?”
He chuckled. “You’re rising from the ashes,” he clarified. “And you are stunning while you do it. I’m absolutely awed by you.”
