Page 14 of Beautiful Sinners

“And whichyouwould that be? My best friend or the other one?”

The sharpness in his voice causes uneasiness to prickle the hairs on my arms. Gone is the kind friend from my past, and in his place is someone harder. Meaner. But beneath his veneer of coldness and hostility, I can see the vulnerability, and what he said the other morning has new meaning now. The malevolent forces that ripped us apart broke each of us in unimaginable ways.

“There was this girl. It didn’t matter that we were just kids. I loved her as much as a young heart could. She was my sunshine. My little golden-haired angel. My soulmate. Everything in me died the day she was taken. The only light I had to guide me was extinguished, and I’ve been living in the dark ever since.”

I close my eyes and focus on that part of my life, flinching when I compel the unpleasant memory forward. As children of the Council, we were brought up with violence and cruelty in order to make us stronger. To prepare us for the roles we would take on as adults. Power. Money. Control. Manipulation. All in the name of the fucking Society. The one thing they couldn’t control was our hearts. We loved each other deeply and fiercely.

“I don’t know yet,” I reply, opening my eyes to see the hope on his face crumble, but I don’t let the heartbreaking sight stop me from speaking the truth.

In a morbid way, I gained my freedom by pushing who I used to be into a dark grave. But that freedom came with great sacrifice, one of those sacrifices sitting before me now.

Holding the towel together in one hand, I slip onto the bed and into his lap. His muscles stiffen and pull tight when I straddle his lap and cup his morning-stubbled cheeks.

“I’m so fucking happy to see you,” I tell him.

It’s a bizarre thing to say, but it’s how I feel. The way Syn sees them is different from the way Aoife did. Jesus, I sound like I’m two different people. A psychiatrist would have a field day inside my mind right now.

He traces a fingertip across the faint bruising on my neck. “And I’m so fucking sorry for how I treated you.”

I touch our foreheads together, something I used to do to help center him when his internal demons would try to surface.

“Never apologize to me. If you hadn’t noticed, I kind of like you being a cocky, irritating, possessive asshole. I’ve got the bite marks to prove it.”

A rush of pent-up air explodes from his lips in a relieved chuckle. “You always were trouble.”

He had called me that in the gym when we were sparring, and it had sounded so familiar. It was Hendrix’s nickname for me.

“I like firefly, too.”

A myriad of emotions dance over his face before his arms draw me closer. The tears well up and threaten to fall, but I swallow them back. There is a special kind of solace here in this moment, and I don’t want to ruin it by crying. We exchange a glance that says everything that neither of us can bring ourselves to speak out loud—how much we’ve missed each other, how much pain our absence has caused, and how profound it feels to be together again.

He sweeps flyaway strands of wet hair away from my face, and his gaze drops to my mouth, its effect as visceral as if he were kissing me.

“A chuisle mo chroí.” I recite the Gaelic words of my Irish heritage that translate to “the beat of my heart” but vernacularly mean “my beloved.”

“I missed you so much. Losing you broke us.”

A soft moan escapes as warmth spreads through me when his tongue slips inside my mouth. His kiss is soft yet desperate. His hands fist the towel at my back as if he’s somehow scared that I’ll vanish into thin air the second he releases me.

“I’m not going anywhere.” And no one will ever keep us apart again.

His body relaxes against mine, and I feel his racing heart slow its frantic beat. The guys and I have been gifted a second chance, one where we get to choose the outcome this time around.

With that singularity in mind, I make a difficult decision. One born from the fire and the knife that scarred my body. One of vengeance. For them and me and my parents. Our enemies want Aoife Fitzpatrick? They fucking got her. And they will regret ever bringing her back.

Grabbing what I can from the pile of clothes before Hendrix can move them again, I hop off his lap. There is no modesty left between us anymore. That ship has long since sailed.

His eyes turn to cold steel when I unwrap the towel and let it fall to the floor.

“I want to kill whoever did that to you.”

I touch my side, allowing my fingers to trail over the rough, raised crisscross pattern, no longer ashamed of the horrors that mar my pale skin. It’s who I am.I am the phoenix.

Wait.

It suddenly dawns on me that Constantine called me Aoife in the hallway. He called me ‘his heart’ in Portuguese when Aleksei was about to kill him and said it again in the shower.

“How long have you known?”

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