Page 228 of Crucible
“Stop, Seth!” Aurelia pleads with terror in her eyes. Terror for me. “You have to stop! Please!”
“No.”
“Go home before they kill you!”
I shake my head as another bullet too close for comfort whizzes by me and hits the exposed bedrock on the other side. “Not without you.”
“Just forget you ever knew me.”
“Never.”
“You better do something about him, or I will,” Finnegan warns as he backs away with my girl in one hand and a gun pointed at me in the other.
I can tell by the panicked glance she gives him that Aurelia takes his warning to heart.
When her eyes return to me, something crumbles inside both of us.
“I overheard the three of you,” she stumbles to tell me. “Out on the deck the day they came. I was eavesdropping from the lower deck.” I’m barely listening as I continue to close the distance between us, but then she says, “Seth, I knew all along the real reason they came. I knew the three of you were lying to me again. You played me.”
My blood turns cold as I shake my head. “No, baby.”
“Yes,” she insists. “You still didn’t trust me. I knew then you never would, and I can’t livelike that. I can’t be bound to that cabin and only the three of you forever. I need more. I need my old life back. I need to matter again.”
“You matter to me, Sunshine. You’re everything. Isn’t that enough?”
She tilts her head back and gives a derisive laugh. “Seriously? You weren’t even enough for Thorin and Khalil to stick around. How could you ever think you could make me happy? I’m Aurelia George. Get fucking real.”
Her words burn through me like acid, bringing me to a screeching halt while every fear I’ve had since Aurelia told me she loves me comes to fruition. What if she lied? What if she stops? What if she wakes up one day and misses her old life?
“I don’t believe you,” I grind out, returning her words from earlier.
Please…please say it’s not true,I bet her silently.
“What about this morning when I snuck out?” she challenges instead. “Open your fucking eyes, Seth. You were right. Can’t you see that? I was running again. I was looking for their camp, but you found me first, and I knew what would happen when you got me back to that cabin. I knew you wouldn’t keep your promise, so I lied. There was no damn deer, and Idon’tlove you.”
No.
My heart doesn’t listen to the denial my soul screams back at hers in response. It shatters inside my chest while my footsteps grow heavy.
I still continue to put one foot in front of the other, though.
“That’s enough warning. Put one in his leg,” Finnegan orders.
“Noooo!” Aurelia screams just as a bullet tears through the skin in my thigh.
The shot echoes around the forest while I grit my teeth in agony and fall to my knees. Aurelia struggles to break free of Finnegan’s hold to get to me, but the mercenary quickens his pace until he’s practically dragging her away while Aurelia screams obscenities at him.
The pain and the bullet don’t stop me, though.
I crawl.
Through the mud, rocks, and dirt…I crawl to get to her. Even if she doesn’t want me. Even if it was all a lie and she doesn’t love me. I crawl to Aurelia because it was real for me, and I can’t let them take her.
I know why they’re really here.
AURELIA
“Fuck, that crazy asshole doesn’t quit.”
