Page 68 of The Killer Card

Her hand takes hold of my hair, ripping my head back hard enough to make my neck crack. I gasp, forced to meet her cold, blue eyes and…

Fuck.

Fuck! There’s tears in her eyes. I made her cry. Why do I always make her cry? “You listen to me, Graham Rosales,” she hisses. “You don’t get to tell me what you can or cannot take! You don’t get to tell me how hard these years have been for you! You don’t get to tell me how fucking hard it was to walk away or to lie to your friends! I know!”

Tears are streaming down her face now, her grip on my hair tightening enough that I reach up to try to loosen her fingers. “Naomi—"

“I know how fucking hard it was! Do you think it wasn’t hard for me to leave?! Do you think it was easy for me to lie all these years?! To Nelly! To Clara! To you?!”

I blink, my breathe catching in my throat. What…? I don’t understand what she could possibly mean, but I know one thing for certain- this is no longer a scene. Perhaps it never was and she was just trying to gain back some control of an argument going off the rails—

“I nearly died, Graham!”

My blood turns to ice in my veins.

“I nearly died trying to be everything everyone expected me to be! I had to walk away from something, it’s just our shit luck it was you!”

She’s properly crying now, fat tears running lines in her makeup. “Naomi…”

I can’t believe she’s saying any of this. Is she that fucking drunk? What does she mean she almost died?! What happened since the last time I saw her?! Did Nelly and Clara keep something from me?! And why is she deciding to tell me now? She would never admit any of this to me the way she was before, all wrapped up in the armor that protected her from the world, me included.

She releases my hair, turning away to violently wipe at her cheeks. “I had to go,” she sobs. “I had to push you away before you ruined everything. I wasn’t good for you, for the man you were trying to be. You were clean and in a good place in your life and I was a young, reckless fool! I would have ruined you and you would have let me!”

Shaking my head, I protest, “That’s not true—”

“LOOK AT YOU, GRAHAM!” She screams, gesturing to me on my knees for her. “Look at what you let me do to you! What I’ve turned you into—”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I shoot to my feet, tapping my fingers against my palm. “Time out! Naomi,” I grab hold of her shoulders. “Mi reina, look at me.”

I dip my head to meet her eyes. “Naomi, you haven’t turned me into anything,” I tell her firmly.

She shakes her head, trying to bat my hands away. “You’re just saying that to make me feel better—”

“No, no I am not,” I almost laugh. “Naomi, whatever I am I became long before I met you. And there’s nothing wrong with what we do,” I insist. “We’re no different than millions of other people and we enjoy it. Don’t we?”

She nods, her lower lip still trembling. I brush a curl behind her ear, cupping her face. “Naomi… You wouldn’t have ruined me. Mi reina, all you did by leaving was prevent me from helping you. If you had just stayed with me, stayed in Lightning Cove—”

“I couldn’t stay, Graham. My father—”

“If you’d let me come with you then,” I shrug. “If you’d asked me to follow you to Boston or D.C. or fucking Shanghai, I would have done it. I still would! Because I fucking love you, Naomi Mychal. I love you, and no amount of lies or threats or opinions- God forbid we tell the world to fuck off, right?”

She actually snorts out a laugh, and I let a small smile steal my lips. “You’re it for me, mi reina. I waited a long fucking time for you, I’ll wait forever if that’s what you need. But you are it. You’re the gift I get after a life of nothing but shit and I refuse to let you go. Do you understand me?”

“Graham—”

“Yell at me. Beat me. Hate me if you must, but I will fucking die before I let you walk away from me again.”

Before another word of protest can pass her lips, I kiss her. I kiss her the way I’ve been dying to since she walked into the cabin three days ago. I kiss her the way I used to when I thought we were falling in love- and we were, she just refused to admit it to either of us. I kiss her as if I’m trying to fuse our souls, even though I know they’re already so entwined not even a knife could untangle the mess we’ve become.

This woman has become integral to my existence. If she ceased to be, I would have no choice but to follow her into whatever is waiting for us beyond this life, whether it be Heaven, Hell, Valhalla- where her soul goes mine will go too.

“Stay with me,” I murmur along the column of her throat. Her head tilts to allow me better access, a moan I haven’t heard in years echoing across the rafters. “Mi reina, quédate conmigo, mi amor… por favor. No me dejes nunca. Te necesito conmigo, siempre.”

The words aren’t much different than those I said to her four years ago- and again two years ago- but back then I was trying to fight against demons she refused to name. “Please, mi reina. Stay.”

“Yes.”

Unlike the last time I begged, Naomi melts into my arms, crying her assent over and over. “Yes, yes, yes!”