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I feel the weight of everyone’s stares. The former confusion shifting from apprehension to amazement with a single adjustment.
The giddiness I have inside is overwhelming. This is it. This is the answer, the solution. It’s right here.
Holding the now combined item up to the light, it’s impressive. Like two missing souls that have found their way back to each other.
“The whole time…” Cole swallows, but it comes out choked and with a rasped awe.
“Well,” Silas enunciates. Impatient when neither of us makes a move to try and unlock the box. “Go on, open it.”
My limbs tense. The excitement of before chilled back down to the realness of what this means. We’ll be able to open the box. Know what Camellia wanted all this time. How this involves Hardin.
“No,” Cole snaps suddenly. Firing off a scorching sideways glance his way.
“No?” Silas responds, mimicking his shock.
“Did I stutter, old man?”
The guy should be grateful to still have the freedom to roam after the bus he tried to throw us all under.
Iceman’s features are stony, but those eyes… I’m not sure if they’re so alive because of the hatred he has toward his father or because this involves someone he cares so deeply for. Silas’s impatience is ruining the sentiment of what this all means.
“How did I manage to have a son so dense? Open the damn thing! Be a man and take control.”
Cole doesn’t flinch, doesn’t blink, not a single fucking muscle is elevated.
He’s fighting himself. Eighteen years’ worth of deeply rooted aggression pent-up inside his body. This one small item, the only thing keeping him in check.
It’s truth keeping him from not demolishing Silas in the way that he deserves.
Fighting himself, that’s what Cole’s doing. He doesn’t want to be anything like the abusive man he shares DNA with.
His fingers are twitching, jumping at his sides but he doesn’t raise them. Doesn’t try and throw an arm. No one would blame him if he did, but that’s where he and Silas differ.
Much to everyone’s disappointment, Cole moves but it’s not in his father’s direction. The action is only to further close my hand that’s still around the newfound key. He still hums of quiet danger, but he’s reined in his temper.
Momentarily.
“There’s a reason she chose you,” he says only loud enough for me to hear. This conversation is not meant for anyone else as he lasers in on me.
Only me. Only him.
That’s what this is about. Both of us parts in a game we didn’t ask to play in.
Unlike with his father, the eyes he has for me are anythingbutsure. “She wanted you to have it, Princess. Whatever’s inside is yours.”
My breath catches, disagreeing. “She gave you half.”
He rotates his head. No. That’s what he’s telling me.
This is all for you.
My skin prickles but I take the box from Sarah. I keep my focus there, avoiding her the same way I do everyone else. My mind is careening everywhere.
Everyone’s eager, but I snap myself out of this nervous fog and straighten my nose.Whatever’s inside is meant for me,I say, repeating that mantra several more times in my head before I move the key toward the hole.
It goes in readily, and my throat bobs.
My skin flattens to my stomach at the air I refuse to give. It stays imprisoned to my curiosity.
