Page 56 of Blood from the Marrow
Elena should have felt crushed between Marisol and Zuri, but she only wanted them to press in more. To hold her tighter until she disappeared.
“Then stop running from us. Stop pushing us away because you’re scared.” Marisol’s voice was steady, sure. “We’re not going anywhere, Elena. We’re here. We chose you. And we keep choosing you every single day.”
Elena wanted to ask how that could be possible, but she couldn’t make herself speak. Couldn’t do anything but stop resisting.
“This is what love is,” Marisol muttered and kissed the back of her neck. “It’s not just the good parts. It’s choosing each other even when everything’s falling apart. It’s staying. Always.”
“Since when do you let yourself be defined by the things you’re afraid of?” Zuri held her almost tight enough. “You want to keep us safe from Sayah? Then you’re going to have to step the fuck up. Not run, not hide. Fight.”
Elena lifted her head to look at Zuri.
“That’s what we’re all doing here,” Zuri said, her own tears not changing the knife’s edge of her tone. “We are fighting for you. For each other. And absolutely no one is going to take jack shit from any of us.” A staggering amount of power erupted from Zuri. A strength of conviction that knocked the air from Elena’s lungs. “Not without paying for it,” she added with a sneer.
Something in Elena’s chest thawed. The constant static of fear and self-doubt and grief quieted. The sharp edges of her panic dulled until all that remained was the warmth of Marisol’s arms around her and the strength of Zuri’s steady gaze.
Hope, Elena realized in a moment of disbelief, was the strongest motivation she’d experienced yet. She didn’t know whether Zuri and Marisol were right, but Elena was tired of being wrong lately. Wrong and isolated.
She couldn’t talk herself into following her own instincts. She was tired and wanted to trust with her heart what she didn’t believe with her mind. Her way hadn’t worked and what did she have to lose by trying? What did she have to lose but everything?
Chapter Twenty-Four
Elena’s bedroomhadn’t changed in the years since Zuri had seen it. She wished she could say the same about herself. Wished that she and Elena were still living in the uncomplicated lust and burgeoning love they had been in when she first visited Venice.
Zuri called bullshit on herself immediately. Without Sayah treating people like fucking game pieces she could sacrifice at will—if she didn’t act like lives didn’t matter—she wouldn’t be here at all. Wouldn’t have a heart that thrummed with wanting. Wouldn’t have so much to lose. She couldn’t wish for the uncomplicated past without forfeiting the present. A present she would do anything to keep.
Fresh from her shower in one of the guest rooms down the hall, Zuri walked into the sprawling bedroom with a towel wrapped around her damp body. In the few minutes alone, she’d allowed herself to cry. Allowed herself to feel the bone-deep relief of having Elena back. Well, she wasn’t sure if Elena wasbackback, but she sure as hell was a lot closer. Like Mars rather than Neptune. At least she was visible to the naked eye now.
Visible and standing at the open glass door leading out to a tiny balcony hanging over the cana, hair wet and wearing nothing but a thin white shirt, Elena should have looked like avivid sex dream. But tension made Elena’s entire body visibly rigid.
Zuri was sure she knew what Elena was thinking. That while Marisol finished in the shower, Elena was replaying the night’s events. That she was beating herself up over things that weren’t her fault and she couldn’t control. Zuri’s stomach clenched into a fist that jabbed straight up into her battered heart. She took a steadying breath and refused to let her the fuck go.
“If you’re going to do this every time we leave you alone…” Zuri said as she approached. “Shit is about to get real fucking codependent.”
Elena glanced over her shoulder. Without any makeup on, without expensive clothes or any vampire boss drag, Elena was so achingly beautiful. So heartbreakingly hers.
“What?” she asked without turning away from the door.
Zuri slipped in behind her, arms around Elena’s waist and chin perched on her shoulder. She inhaled the salt in the air and closed her eyes. “Whenever I think you finally heard me, that you get how much I need you to stay with me—” The back of her throat burned, but she refused to cry again. “Every time I leave you alone… you start slipping away again.”
Elena didn’t argue. Instead, she rested her arms over Zuri’s and interlaced their fingers. She let Zuri hold her like that, silently conceding that Zuri was right instead of proving her wrong. Fuck, Zuri had never wanted to be more wrong in her life.
‘“You can’t leave me, Elena.” Zuri’s voice was a quiet plea when she’d intended to issue a command.
Squeezing Zuri’s hand, Elena seemed to sayI’m trying.
They stood there in silence. Without moving a muscle, Zuri felt like she was scaling a crumbling cliff with nothing but her bleeding fingertips. But a more stubborn bitch had never been born. It didn’t matter how many times she stumbled, she keptclimbing. Kept pushing until she had an unshakable grip on Elena.
And then Elena relaxed in her arms. She loosened the grip over her hand, holding instead of clutching. The weight of her strong body resting against Zuri’s chest made Zuri take her first full breath in months.
Behind them, a door clicked open. Zuri looked back at Marisol emerging from the bathroom. Her wavy, dark blonde hair damp where it fell on her exposed shoulders. In nothing but a towel, her scattered freckles were visible over her arms and chest and flushing cheeks.
“Come here, Bambi,” Zuri said softly before Marisol’s eyes widened any further. Before her fears of being an addition rather than an integral part of the core could take hold.
Marisol hesitated, and Zuri knew her well enough to know that she was afraid of intruding. That even after all this, she didn’t fully believe that the three of them were equal parts of the same whole. That she wasn’t just wanted—she was needed. She was necessary the way every body needed a heart to function.
“You know how I love to repeat myself,” Zuri said, sharpening her tone if that was more familiar.
Marisol didn’t move. “I?—”
