Page 64 of Their Broken Legend

My guard is down for the first time, and I am bare within it. I’ll never forget this moment in time, in all its bloody, brutal beauty, because this is the first moment, I’ve ever felt a shift to my entire makeup—the very first fall into love. It's as though my soul is whispering, ‘He’s finally here.’

Someone reliable.

Honest and real.

“I want to keep you,” he states, the innocent statement offset by his raspy timbre. “Stay. Stay with me. I’m not easy to be with. I fuck up a lot—"

“No.” I lift my finger to his bloody lips. “No. You’re easy to be with. You’re the easiest thing in my life at the moment.”

“Not just now. All the time. Be the person who stays for me. Who listens tome.Who actuallyhearsme. I need that person, Baby. Stay, and be that person.”

God, he’s intense.My chest squeezes: he’s acting strange again, distant, disorientated, but he’s okay. He’ll be okay. “I’ll stay.”

“Promise?”

My lower lip wobbles, but I don’t know why. The emotions are so extreme they form lumps in my throat, well my eyes with tears—scare me.“I promise.”

I strip down to my underwear. I turn the shower on, feeling dizzy with this love spell, and I help him clean his face, the blood already caked in hisnowshorter hair and across his scalp.

He’s unsteady on his feet. He leans his head on my shoulder, and I wash his back. Nuzzling his nose against my temple, he’s soft and gentle.

Do you feel this too, Xander?

This moment?

The one when we fall in love?

I take the heavy load of his head, but then it gathers in burden on my shoulder until the feel of it is bruising. Then he leans his weight, his feet—Oh God.

“Xander!”

He collapses forward.

I try to catch him, but we both slip against the water. I drop backwards, his body crushing mine to the tiles. I press my hands to his hard chest, straining to lift him even an inch, but it’s fuck all use.

Blood waterfalls from his mouth.

Oh. God.

I strain to push his shoulders upwards, but he’s a dead weight. I grip his heavy head, a bowling ball in my palms, to search his face.

My mouth fills with bile when I see his eyes are closed in a harrowing way. Not shut. Not squeezed.Unconscious.A slight gap that shows inner whites. There is so much blood leaking from his mouth; it’s thick and fibrous, falling from the pooling red mass collecting in his lower jaw.

“Xander!”

No. No. No.

“Somebody! Help us! Help him!”

My heart feels like lead now.

Heat hits my eyes and pummels them with tears that spit from me. Sobs shake my body as he crushes air from me, the downpour and his blood puddling and mingling around our crumbled bodies.

I cup his neck, his head almost too heavy to hold. “You said ‘stay with me!’ You said ‘stay!’” I shake him desperately. “I’m staying! Where are you? Get up! Get up!”

I lose it.

Hysterics consume me, flood me, drown me, as I remain pinned beneath him, below the falling water, the leaking blood, helpless and useless as the moments stretch.

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