Page 76 of Eat You Alive (Court Legacy 4)

“I didn’t have a scrape.” She wasn’t listening to me, clearly. She closed her eyes. “Truck hit my dad’s side, and I didn’t have afucking scrape, Ares.How does that even happen?”

Because she was lucky. She’d been lucky. “It wasn’t your time.”

“And it was his?” She cringed now, but it wasn’t because of the storm. “Why wasn’t itme? It should have been me. I was driving. Why wasn’t it me!”

She screamed above the roar in the heavens, none of this fazing her now. Her anger seemed to have risen above it, and I leaned in. “Don’t say that about yourself.”

“Why not?”

“Because it wasn’t your time.” A grit hit my voice, and I wished I didn’t understand it. I wished I had zero emotion when it came to this girl. I wished even more I didn’t understand this. I wished I didn’t gether pain, but I did. “You’re supposed to be here, Fawn. You are, and you shouldn’t feel guilty for that. You shouldn’t any more than I do.”

Her lashes flashed up, red fanning above nut-brown irises.

I glanced away, her gaze probing. “It wasn’t long ago I felt the same way about myself. Why I got to be here and my sister taken…” My attention shifted to her. “I used to feel like for a long time it should have been me who got swiped. I wished it was.”

Desperately, I had. I’d actually been resentful of my own existence and harbored even more guilt when I couldn’t find her myself. I’d searched for years before she came back.

Fawn looked at me, scanning my face. “How did you get through it? That feeling? That guilt?” Her expression twisted. “It hurts so much.”

I could hear it in her voice, that hurt, and I appreciated she didn’t console me. That she didn’t feel the need to tell me it wasn’t my fault. This was a given and something I was so glad I was on the other side of now.

I touched her then, again probably dumb but couldn’t help it. Her red hair looped my finger. “I guess I realized one day I was here for a reason,” I stated, focused on her. “I was and had an obligation to myself and the people I cared about to live my life. ThatI mattered, and I needed to liveformy sister. I owed that to her and myself.”

It’d been a long journey and one I really hadn’t seen the other side of until Sloane came back. There’d been a start, though. A turning point, and that was the day I was referring to.

I kept that time to myself, that day. I didn’t want to talk about it and one hundred percent couldn’t with Fawn.

She wouldn’t understand.

My fingers weaved through red tendrils. “I don’t know your dad. I don’t, but you being here… living life and honoring him in every photo you take and every day you fight is a win for him. You gotta fight, Red. You have to, and you can’t harbor that guilt.”

It wouldn’t help her, and it didn’t me. It just made me angry, mean. Nah, it didn’t help, and she couldn’t take on that weight.

I think the storm had stopped, and maybe she was right that she wasn’t scared of it. It might just bring back some memories, and my thumb touched a wet trail on her freckled skin. Her tears had stopped but still coated her cheeks.

I eased the trail away, my fingers brushing it. I was so focused there, and it took a beat to notice her proximity. The heat of our breaths intermingled, and when I gazed up, Fawn had her eyes shut.

She did before she closed the space.

Red had kissed me before, and it surprised me now just as it had on the bus. I didn’t know what to do with myself, not able to actually kiss her with a clear head and no excuse.

Stop this.

Growling, I shifted her to her back, separating us.

It was needed.

My fingers bit into her arms, my breaths husky, labored. Fawn lay with wide eyes and parted lips below me.

At least, at first.

Eventually, she reached up, her fingers hesitant.

“Don’t,” I gritted, actually speaking this. My tongue eased out. “No.”

She wasn’t listening to me, not giving a fuck, and I really didn’t know what I was telling her not to do. I just knew this was a bad idea. It’d been one before.

But the way her fingers felt in myfucking hair.

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