Page 40 of Reckless Covenant

“By the way, they’re not the originals. You can stay at your parents tonight, if you need time to process.” His sleazy, mad grin lingers in my memory minutes after he walks out the door.

I want to go open it, but everyone will expect me at the table.Fuck.

No one really notices when I walk back into the dining room, all caught in conversation. Except for two penetrating pairs of eyes. They didn’t miss the envelope I put away on my lap. I managed to finish dinner with minimal conversation, and even The Serpent and Maddox attempted polite exchanges. Enough not to seem rude, but not enough that it would allude to our current proximity. After all, both my parents are fully aware that we knew each other once. Once…

Now that dinner is over, my parents are inviting the guests to the formal living room on the other side of the house for drinks. And I take the cue to excuse myself.

“What’s that?” My mother’s voice stops me in my tracks, and I think the hand clutching the envelope is beginning to sweat.

“Something… for the wedding,” I improvise. “I just want to go look it over. I’ll be back in a while.”

“Oh, I should look too if it’s about the wedding.”

Fuck!

“This is a bit more private—some honeymoon arrangements.”

Fire and ice hit my back at the same time, yet somehow, they both burn. I know in my gut which pairs of eyes are doing that to me. I move away before more questions are thrown my way, and the moment I’m out of sight, I all but run upstairs, heading to what used to be my room.

Bursting through the door, I go to the bed, turning on the lamp closest to me, and throw the envelope onto it. It feels like it’s staring at me, that rough, brown paper hides something he said threatens my life too. I know it’s not possible for it to be what I think… I fucking know it. Yet this man managed to flip a switch on the person he used to be, so he makes me believe in the impossible.

I rake my fingers through my loose hair and finally rip the envelope open. Large photos fall onto the bed. It takes but a second to recognize what I’m looking at, another second for my breath to hitch painfully in my lungs, another one for the shock to reach my heart, and I’m not sure if it stopped beating, but when I press my hand onto it, I can’t feel the movement.

“Son of a bitch…”

A slight creak makes me jump and turn to the door. The tall, strong body that fills the doorway looks oh-so-stern in his black ensemble.

His darkness arrives with a rise in the pressure of the air, and as he closes the door behind him and steps into my space, that pressure becomes almost unbearable. Yet somehow strangely satisfying. The type that quickens your heartbeat, that makes you forget to breathe, that makes your knees weak.

I don’t move the moment he steps farther in, my back to the photos I try to conceal. His eyes still flicker to the bed, but they don’t linger. Instead, he prolongs the torture as he looks around the room, taking in the parts of me that exist here, clearly curious by the insight. He pauses on certain things, only I don’t care enough in this moment to figure out which, or what, it could mean. This room has evolved with me over the years, no traces left of the teenager I used to be, the one he used to know.

That teenager died young.

And those photos laid on my bed show the reason why.

When he finally turns to me, in this room that holds secret memories we share, he looks at me as if I’m both good and evil, Heaven and Hell, love and malice, like I’m… everything.

He closes the distance between us, my breasts almost touching his chest, and grips my chin between two fingers, cocking his head as he holds me still.

“Private honeymoon arrangements?” he asks in his signature calm voice that chills bones. But what shocks me is that he does not hide the blatant jealousy.

I don’t have the courage to speak though, not when it means those fingers will leave my skin. Not when the alternative is for him to see how Ryan has just complicated things.

But he lets go anyway, and I sigh as his simmering touch lingers and he steps next to me, picking up one of the photos from the bed.

“What is this?” His tone changes its tune.

He leans over, assessing each photo as I rake my fingers through my hair, grabbing two handfuls, feeding the sting on my scalp as I tighten my grip.

“That’s you.” He pins me with a stern gaze and throws the evidence onto the bed. “These were taken years ago. Who took them? And who the fuck is the person you’re burying?!”

* * *

One by one,those images from the night I killed a man imprint in my memory. It’s not as if I needed to be reminded I did it, it’s not something one forgets, but… I never truly regretted doing it, so I rarely ever think of it. And that’s what brings me true guilt.

“Speak!” He raises his voice as high as he can in this room, but I hesitate. Not because I’m afraid to admit what he can clearly see already, but because of how that story could affect him. Or maybe it won’t affect him at all, and that scares me more.

My lips part, but I’m interrupted by that slight creak in the door again, and we both turn, shielding the evidence. My heart falls back in its place when I see Maddox entering and quickly shutting the door.

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