Page 35 of Delirium
“Now get your hands away from her neck and walk away. Storm might be an idiot right now, but he won’t like it if you kill her, no matter how much he thinks that he hates her.”
It felt as if an eternity passed before Indigo released me, letting me fall against the bar, coughing and wheezing. He got closer to Atlas.
“We need to talk.”
“No, we don’t.” Atlas smiled and took a step toward me. My hand was wrapped around my neck, trying to rub away the soreness coming up. “You already said everything I needed to hear. There’s nothing left for you to say.”
“Atlas—”
“No, Indigo. Save it,” Atlas answered, completely ignoring Indigo.
Atlas’s arms wrapped around my middle, holding me upright, and as we passed next to Storm and straight outside, I finally understood.
Sometimes trying to hold onto something or someone was a sure way to descend into hell. And Storm and this push and pull between the two of us—it was my version of hell.
8
STORM
I was goingto murder her.
No, I was going to murder her, revive her and murder her again. And again. And fucking again until she learned her lesson.
“What the fuck did you do, Ophelia!” I roared, looking straight at her where she sat on the couch, looking up at me as if she didn’t just fuck up the entire operation.
“That girl could have died because of you!”
“But she didn’t,” Ophelia answered calmly. “She survived, and that’s all that matters.” She shrugged. “And don’t raise your fucking voice at me, Storm.”
I looked at her, trying to understand where this ice queen sitting in front of me was coming from. This wasn’t the Ophelia I knew. This wasn’t the woman I would have given my life for.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” I asked, trying to break through her icy shell. “You knew the danger. You knew the plan. You—”
“Actually, I didn’t.” She glared at me. “I knew nothing because none of you bothered to fill me in, Storm. None of you told me what the plan was because you don’t trust me. And that’s absolutely fine. But don’t bring me here, under this whole false pretense that you needed me and that you wanted to include me in your plans, when it’s obvious that isn’t the case.”
“Indigo was supposed to—” I was about to say, cursing myself for not seeing it before.
I’d tasked Indigo with Ophelia, telling him that he needed to get off of his high horse and work with her, but it was clear that my decision was not a good one.
“Yeah, exactly,” she murmured and stood up. “I did what I wanted to do, Storm, just like I always do. That girl doesn’t need to be coddled. She doesn’t need to be protected and kept in the dark.”
“She isn’t you!” I thundered, trying to wrap my head around the fact that she put that poor kid in danger. “She doesn’t know how to fight, Ophelia. She isn’t trained for this kind of situation, and what happened is exactly what we wanted to avoid. A psychopath tried to kill her, and he almost succeeded.”
Her eyes kept blinking, her anger a living, breathing thing, existing between us, fueled only more by my own.
“Is that what you tried to accomplish, huh? You tried to kill her?”
“No.” She shook her head. “I tried to give her back her power. You men all preach about equal rights, the fact that we are on the same level as you are, but you don’t allow us to take care of ourselves. That girl was drowning, you fucking idiot!”
“And you almost killed her with your actions!”
“Fine, Storm,” she relented. “Fine. I tried to kill her. Does that make you feel better? Me admitting to your ridiculous accusations? Here, darling.” She pulled her sleeve up and extended her arm toward me. “You wanna carve ‘murderer’ in my flesh? Go ahead, do it. I’m your favorite villain, so why not make it official?”
“You’re being ridiculous.” I huffed.
“I’m being ridiculous?” she exclaimed, her eyes widening. “I’m not the one standing here and accusing you of something utterly insane. That’s all you, buddy.”
“You have no idea what you’ve done,” I murmured. “Dylan and Ash are missing, and Skylar isn’t in the hospital.”
