Page 82 of Pretty Black

“Think about it for a second. If I was out of reach, Alexander would have no Pretty Broken. He couldn’t do anything to the rest of you. It would be better for everyone.”

“Do you need to call Dr. Kahn?” His voice shook.

“I’m not suicidal. Not at all. Not even passively. For the first time in…I thinkever, I want to be alive and that’s scarier than not wanting to be here with everything that’s going on.” I looked over at him.

“Have you always wanted to die?” he asked carefully.

“As long as I can remember. I remember wanting to go to sleep and not wake up.” It wasn’t any easier to talk about even after having told Dr. Kahn.

“And the pain stuff?” he asked. I should have expected it.

“I do remember the first time. I think I changed my brain chemistry when I embraced it. Pain was survival. It fed my soul.”

How much honesty was too much? Could someone who didn’t understand the world I came from continue to look me in the eyes when I was bluntly honest? Fear ate at me.

“How old were you?”

“Ten.” How damaged was too damaged for him to still love me?

“That young?” Cas asked, and I could read the pity in his eyes.

“And this is why I hate telling people.” I tore my gaze away because it was too hard to look at him. “I know I’m unloveable, but what I can’t decide is if I made myself this way or if I didn’t have a chance from the start.”

“What did I do?” Concern moved through every bone in his body like someone had pulled him tight with a cord.

“I can see the pity in your eyes.”

His brow knit, but to his credit, he didn’t deny it. “I’m not allowed to hate it for you?”

“I’ve been thinking a lot about that for the last few weeks. It’s made me who I am. If I changed, we might not be this or us. I don’t know if I can take any of it back and still want to live.”

He nodded slowly. “I’d trade all of this to take your pain away.”

I shook my head. “I don’t think I would.” I didn’t exactly like who I was every day, but it was me. “What if in this world where I have no pain, we never met?”

“I won’t accept that.” He frowned. “There isn’t a version of us who don’t find each other.”

“Is that so?”

“It’s so. I can’t imagine a world where I don’t love you.” He drank me in, this beautiful man, and he loved me. “I’m forbidding it from existing.”

“Forbidding it? I don’t think that’s how physics works.”

“There isn’t a version of me who is happy without a version of you. I feel it in my chest. I knew it the first time you looked at me and in every look thereafter. You are my perfect person, Iris Rose.”

I deepened our kiss, believing him.

“I hate to interrupt,” Kingsley said.

Caspian rubbed his nose over mine before pulling back. “What did he leak now?”

“Pretty damning stuff about Alister and me.” Kingsley scrubbed a hand over his face.

TWENTY-SIX

PRESENT DAY

Iris Rose

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