Page 20 of These Godly Lies
“Why not?!” he shouts, voice cracking like glass under pressure. Splintering into a thousand shards, each as sharp and as dangerous as the other. “My father stopped fighting. Gave up. But I’m not like him. I’m not weak.” The tears come faster, breath hitching, face crumpling. When he repeats the words, they come out as a sob. “I’m not!”
“No, Jiro. You’re not. You’ve been so strong. That’s why you’re here. That’s why you’re still alive.” She offers him a smile, a timid, haunted thing that carries more suffering than it should. “Living takes strength, but that doesn’t mean you have to do it alone.”
A second, then two. The barrel of the shotgun trembles with how violently he’s shaking. Then it drops away, the steel thudding against the floor. In the morning, when she looks, Anna knows she will find an imprint of the muzzle on the wood—a scar more visible than the ones on their hearts. For now, she focuses on the boy leaning into her, his forehead against her collar and his tears soaking into the cotton of her dress. Her arms wrap around his shoulders, folding him into her embrace until the firearm drops from his grip completely. His empty hands fist in the cloth at her back as if she’s the only thing mooring him. As if letting her go would mean being swept off into the sea.
It’s a feeling she knows—understands.She holds him closer, tighter, just so he’ll know he’s not alone in holding on.
Silently, Khiran picks up the abandoned shotgun from the floor. His movements slow and careful as he goes to empty it of ammunition. His brow furrows, eyes meeting hers over Jiro’s dark hair, before he angles his body so she can see the chamber.
It’s empty.
That night, Khiran lays with his back to the mattress and his gaze on the ceiling. “How did you know it wasn’t loaded?”
The question is so soft, it floats. Anna thinks of the hard steel pressed against her chest, of the years of pain that drove it there in the first place. Thinks of the box of birdshot that sat in the same closet as the shotgun. “I didn’t,” she admits. The confession sounds louder in the dark. “I only—” She pauses.Knewisn’t the right word—doesn’t do the feeling in her chest justice. Knowing implies facts and certainties. Knowing is simple. Easy.
Belief is harder.
“I hadfaiththat he wouldn’t pull the trigger.”
He turns to his side, facing her. She can feel his gaze on her cheek, questioning. Mirroring his position, they lay face to face, with only a sliver of silver moonlight streaming through the window to see by. So close they share the same breath. “It’s not your fault.”
“I know,” she murmurs, but the words are fragile. Weak. Knowing is different from believing. Just because she knows it to be true doesn’t mean shefeelsit.
Khiran’s fingers thread through her hair, curling at the nape of her neck. “You put yourself between me and the end of a shotgun.”
“I don’t bleed.” The color of his eyes is lost in the dark, but she can see the way they spark. She doesn’t let his displeasure shy her from the truth. “You do.”
“Don’t do it again.”
Anna reaches for the hand tangled in her hair, thumb brushing soothing circles over his pulse. “You know I can’t promise that.”
“Won’t,” he corrects, the word a resigned grumble against her lips.
She considers it, turns the differences around in her mind the way a child holds a crystal to the window just to watch the lightbend and refract, showering the room in a galaxy of rainbow colored stars.
“Won’t,” she agrees, because choosing him has only ever felt natural, never forced. “And can’t.” Because shielding him from hurt, from pain, was as instinctual as breathing. She could have hung back, could have held her breath, but her heart would have burned and her lungs would have starved. “Would you do any differently?”
“No,” he sighs. “But we’ve already established that I’m a fool when it comes to you.”
Anna’s smile is heavy, weighed down by heartache. “Then let us be fools together.”
CHAPTER SIX
Never has a choice hurt him so terribly. The goodbye, the forgiveness, in her eyes will haunt him—burnhim—like live coal nestled behind his ribcage. The temptation to let it consume him is terrifyingly real, but he smothers it before it can catch. To stop fighting now would mean losing her, too.
CALIFORNIA, UNITEDSTATES
SUMMER1958
When the day comes, Anna isn’t ready for it.
Together, they had made plan after plan for how they would proceed when The First sent someone looking for them. Years of discussing and fine tuning an escape, so they could sleep easier at night. They couldn’t be more prepared and, yet, the moment Anna spies a pale blonde stranger’s silhouette approaching their home is the moment she realizes that—for all they spoke of it—she never really believed the day would come as soonas it did.
Jiro has been with them for a little over two years. Khiran brought her all the ingredients she requested so she could make him galette des rois for his eighteenth birthday in two weeks, because she knows he’s been eager to try it since he stumbled on a recipe in the French cookbook Khiran brought back for him. They’re getting along, have grown on each other the way time and circumstance nurtures. Anna is so happy with where her life is, she had stopped believing in the possibility of it ending before it could well and trulystart.
Khiran never had such difficulties.
He’s by her side in an instant—no doubt feeling the fear lancing her heart. One look at the stranger, still only a silhouette of dark leather against pale skin, and he steps in front of her. Shielding her. “Get Jiro. Now.”
