Page 48 of Cursed to Be Mine
I shake my head, trembling against the wall of my walk-in closet.
No.
No, she’s alive,I try to convince myself even as a bone-deep truth squeezes around my lungs.
She’s probably just driving around, letting off steam.
A car will not save her.
Not from a werewolf chasing her.
Or a vampire or a witch. My blood pounds in my skull as that terrible knowledge claws at my chest, making me feel as if I’m the one dying. As if I can actually feel her last moments.A mother knows…A mother knows, and I’m just sitting here alone in my house while my daughter is being killed right this moment.
I canfeelit in my bones.
Her life leaving her.
Her screams of pain.
Tears rolling down my face, I shift my legs, about to climb to my feet. But the noise of the front door opening cuts through my plans and my grief, and I become attuned to everything. Every brush of the still air over the raised hairs on my arms. Every creak of the house. Every bead of salt that fills my nose. The bitter tang of fear creeping across my tongue. The grip of the gun, its trigger slick beneath my finger.
“Hannah?” a man calls up the stairs, breaking the spell of intense awareness.
Scrambling upright, I run to the locked door of my room. My fingers fumble with pulling it open. My heartthunders in screaming relief. I start to run downstairs and into his arms, but a sudden thought freezes me just outside the door.
“Daniel?” I whisper into the darkness, half raising the gun in case it’s some sort of trick. “What are you doing here?”
I don’t ask how he got in. Derek has a key to every WALL member’s house in case he needs to go in after their death or while they’re in jail and clear out any incriminating evidence. And not just about the world of the sups or our involvement in the WALL. Any crime we ever commit, he’ll clean. All members are too precious to lose, our fight against the sups too important.
Daniel’s head pushes through the lighter shadows as he climbs the stairs, and at the sight of him, I nearly crumble. He’s real. Not a trick of a voice. Not a lure to bring me downstairs.
“I wanted to make sure you’re okay,” he says.
“If anyone sees you –” I start, thinking about our alibis, an instinctive response that pushes me closer to a level-headed calm.
“I’ll say I came back with Scarlett.”
Scarlett. My heart shatters as he rounds the railing, his hands up at his sides, unthreatening. “She’s not here,” I whisper. “I think she might be –” The word digs its claws into the sides of my throat, refusing to get pushed into the air. To become real even though Iknowit already is. I shudder as Daniel’s arms come around me.
And the feel of danger I’ve been consumed by all this time doesn’t disappear; it merely changes into a different sort.
He’s my daughter’s ex-boyfriend.
Whose body feels too damn good in the dark.
“You should lea–” I stop as he lifts a hand to brush his thumb across my tears, swallowing the words that would make him go. I know his feelings for me grew past fuck buddies weeks ago. He became more gentle, more…aware of me outside of his father’s office at the WALL complex. Going out of his way to do things for me. Searing me with lingering looks and touches I’ve tried to ignore, not returning the feelings, but now…
With less than twenty-four hours to live, having been marked by that reaper, and with Scarlett, the only family I have –hadundoubtedly gone…
She would understand our coming together in grief.
So I don’t step back when his hand feathers into my hair. I lift my chin when he bends down to kiss me.
I need this.
After everything I’ve suffered tonight, I need to just be loved. Tears roll down my cheeks.
His touch is soft and gentle, but as soon as the gun drops from my hand, I wrap my fingers in his shirt and yank him against me while backpedaling into my room. I need this.
