AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I stepped forward. “It doesn’t matter—”
“It does!” He brought the poker down, smashing it, then brandished the iron tip at me. “I don’t know who you are. I don’t know who I am! How can I love you when I don’t even know you?”
I shrank back. “I am still me.”
“And what are you? I don’t know you and never will. How can I ever trust you? Last night, you knew what you’d done and you still… We…” He choked up, then cleared the emotion with a growl. “You took me into your bed, knowing how you’ve manipulated me myentire life.You put me in a mental asylum! Not even a monster would be so cruel. You areworsethan Adair.”
His fury turned to despair, and his face fell.
“I don’t control how it plays out, just the framework. Like a clockface, I design the clock, but not the hours it counts. Adair took my design and twisted it. He knew I didn’t remember…” I trailed off in the glare of his fury. He wouldn’t listen. Guilt and self-loathing made me want to tear at myself and rip out all the wrongness.
I’d lost him. I’d lost everything. I couldn’t do this alone. It would hurt too much. Anger boiled, fueled by fear. “You think reality is any better, Val? The life I took you from is worse than those I’ve made for you! The real world despises us. You are nothing there—a pathetic poor boy in a nowhere town full of hatred. You are alone, and lost, with nothing and nobody. Without me, youarenothing.”
He blinked. “But it’s my life.”
“It’s no life at all. I made this. I made us. We wouldn’t exist without me!”
Now he shrank away. Oh gods, what had I done?
“No, Val. Wait… No, I’m wrong. Everything is wrong.”
I tried to go to him, to hold him, but he stumbled backward and raised the poker. His eyes glistened with tears.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I did not mean for this to happen. I just… I trapped myself too. Please—”
“No, you were going to torture me forever, because I made one stupid mistake all those years ago. That is the creature you are.”
“It was wrong. I know that. I forgot… You don’t understand. I forgot too. Please… I was young and foolish and angry at you—”
“So this is my fault?” He laughed. “I don’t even care about that.” He dropped the poker. It hit the floor and clanged like a bell. “I loved you.”
No, no, what was happening? This couldn’t be the end. If he’d just listen. “Val, please. I’m sorry. I’ll say it a thousand times.” I tried to reach for him again, but he backed up, shaking his head. “I’ll do anything. I’ll prove to you I’ve changed. I trapped myself too. It’s a mess. I know that. I will fix it, like I fixed Hush. For you. I promise. Just… please—don’t leave me.”
His tears fell freely. He angrily swiped them away. “You’ll do anything? Truly?”
“Anything.”
“Then let me go.”
End the fantasy? I glanced at the clocks on the wall behind him. If I ended it, I’d have nothing. What was my life without Valentine Anzio? What washislife? “Reality is a cruel and horrible place. Please, trust me, you do not want to live there. I can make us a new reality—”
“But my lifeis realwhere I am free to choose! Gods, why do you not understand that?”
“What is so good aboutreality? Is this not real, right here and now? What makes your ‘real’ any better than mine?” I snarled, hating how he recoiled, hating myself more and more with every word, but unable to stop. Because it hurt. It hurt so much that I had nothing left with which to fight back.
“Let me go, Devere!” he yelled.
“Never!You are mine.”
He breathed in and sighed hard through his nose. “Fine.”
He shoved by me and threw off my attempt to catch his arm. Then he was gone, vanished from the remains of my store with the door’s bell tinkling in my ear, sounding too much like Adair’s laughter.
ChapterForty
Valentine
I didn’t know anything anymore, just that all of this was Devere’s fantasy, and if he refused to end it, I’d make him.
