Page 119 of Diamond Devil

I push his hand off my hip and shake my head. “Please, I’m begging you… Don’t. You have to stop touching me. I…I can’t think straight when you touch me.”

“Taylor—”

“No!” I gasp, the word bursting out of me like a desperate prayer. “No! It hurts too much.”

He stops short. His eyes see everything I’m not saying. “Taylor.”

“I’m having your baby. That’s all there is between us. That’sall.”

Oh, how I wish that were true. But I don’t sound convincing. Not to God, or to Ilarion, or the little sparrow on the tree above us.

Even that bird is judging me. I can feel it. I deserve it.

“The night we met,” I continue in a teary rasp, “that was a mistake. I was vulnerable, and—”

“Do you regret it?”

“I…I regret doing that to Celine.”

“Nothing was done to Celine,” he insists. “You and I met. We had sex. Celine had nothing to do with it. I didn’t know her then. She was still a stranger to me. What happened between us was…singular.”

I blink, and another tear runs down my cheek. It feels like I’ve shed a lifetime of tears in the span of days.

And yet I feel like I haven’t really been living—until I met him.

He leans in, but I brace my palm against his chest and stop him from moving any closer. “No. I can’t—”

“But you want to.”

Does he even realize how much he’s asking of me? Does he know that it hurts to breathe near him? Much less admit that I want what belongs to my sister?

“You were mine before I was ever hers,” he whispers.

I make the mistake of looking up into his eyes. I make the mistake of falling into his words. Of trusting something that I can barely understand.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he rumbles. “You’re thinking you can’t do this to Celine. That it’s Alec all over again.”

I suck in my breath, feeling the muscles of my stomach tighten painfully. “She told you everything?”

There I go again, asking questions I’m not sure I want the answers to.

“Yes—including the fact that she knew you were not to blame for what happened,” he confesses. “You asked her about her feelings for Alec and she lied to you. When you got involved with him, it hurt her. But you didn’t betray her, Taylor. She knew that.”

She knew that.She knew, and she still punished me for something sheknewI didn’t do. She let our parents punish me for something that wasn’t my fault.

And she made me carry this guilt ever since.

I’m surprised at how numb I am to the idea that Celine has fallen into the past tense now. Just like Mom.

I shake my head. The future that Ilarion is dangling in front of me is way too tempting to let myself reach for it. I want it too bad to hope.

“What happened back then doesn’t matter. You may not have been her fiancé when we met,” I say. “But you are now. Celine believes that, and that’s what matters.”

“Celine’s not believing anything anymore.” His eyes are bright in the darkening night. “She’s gone, Taylor. I think we both know that.”

“She’s still up there, Ilarion. She’s still breathing. I just…I can’t stop thinking… I can’t stop—”

He places a finger over my lips and my words die against his touch. “You think too much,” he murmurs. “It’s time to quit.”

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