Page 93 of Heart of a Rebel

At least now it’s clear he’s delusional. I know for a fact Cyrus has never been directly in contact with the band. He keeps his communication with them through me. The relationship he’s manifested in his head is a figment of his imagination.

It makes him dangerous.

It makes him lethal.

With that realization, I do spare a glance at Eloise because I’m not sure how far Cyrus is going to take this, only that I’ll go down fighting if I have to. But not before I get one more good look in her eyes and make a wish on those stars that make them sparkle.

When I meet her gaze, her fear is replaced with worry from whatever she reads on my face because she’s always been so perceptive.

Her lips part, but before she can convince me otherwise, I’ve already tipped the first domino, dropping the lighter Cyrus didn’t see me fish out of my pocket. Cyrus’s eyes dip for a fraction of a second as the lighter hits the floor of the bus in a distraction.

A fraction of a second.

It’s all I need to reach them. To wrap my hand around his and shove Eloise out of the way, into Sebastian’s arms. But as expected, Cyrus doesn’t go down without a fight. If anything, he roars up the moment she’s out of his grip. He tries to push me aside, to take back control, to reach his obsession.

I shove my body against his and try to knock the knife from his grip with a hit of both our hands against the counter. It doesn’t work. Instead, I make a wrong move and he gets the slightest advantage, shoving me.

The blade sinks in like a hot knife through butter. It slips into my body without any resistance. So smooth I barely feel it. And what I do feel, I ignore, in favor of using Cyrus’s moment of admiration toward his handiwork against him. I slam my fist into his face so hard I feel his bones break under my knuckles. Or maybe that was my hand shattering. I’m really not sure what’s him or me, only that I don’t stop until he’s no longer moving, and I’m being pulled off him by security.

“Adrian.” Eloise flings herself at me, but I flinch when I sit back, and the knife moves inside my gut.

I slump against a cabinet as she kneels in front of me.

Fuck, this hurts all of a sudden.

“Oh, God.” Her hands fly up to cover her mouth. “You’re hurt. Why would you do that?”

Tears pool at her lashes, and I can’t help but reach up to brush her cheek. Her dark eyes find mine, stopping time or speeding it up—who knows anymore. Her stare might as well be the gates to heaven and hell combined. Every place I belong has always been in her.

“It’s going to be okay,” I say.

It might be a lie, and if so, my last words might be something I can’t live up to. But as long as she believes it in this moment, that’s all that matters.

My hand falls as my whole body gets weak.

Eloise leans in and buries her face in the crook of my neck, careful not to move the blade. “Stay with me, okay? Stay with me. I love you.”

“I love you too, El.” It’s the last thing I get out before it’s too hard to keep my eyes open anymore, so I let her dark eyes take me away.

33

Eloise

IwasalmostconvincedAdrian is invulnerable. Because even when he’s opened up to me and given me glimpses of the man beneath the hard exterior, there’s no weakness in him. Only strength.

But at the end of the day, we’re all human.

A truth I was faced with as I held his face between my palms and begged him to hold on until the paramedics arrived. I watched him fight the fragility that exists within all of us. I watched war wage in his eyes until he slowly slipped into darkness.

Even then, eyes closed and barely breathing, I refused to believe I could lose him—that I would be the reason. Adrian is a warrior, a fighter, and as I learned on the bus, he’s someone with a dark side that he let out for me. Because as I stood there with the knife at my throat, Adrian was eerily calm. It wasn’t until his gaze wavered and he looked at me that I realized it was only because he had made a decision. He was willing to sacrifice himself if it meant saving me.

At the end of the day, he would do whatever it took to do what he couldn’t do for Samantha or his father.

Keeping good on his promise if it meant going down fighting.

And down he went. But like the fighter he is, he refused to stay there. And I can’t help the swell of relief that overwhelms me every time his eyes meet mine.

“You look like shit.” Rome walks into the hospital room with a bouquet of pink flowers like the asshole he is.

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