Page 18 of Delirium
“No.” I shook my head. “It’s a promise.”
The men around us looked at each other, then at us, understanding washing over their faces.
My phone buzzed relentlessly, filling the silence spreading around us. As Creed took it from the bed, I knew by the look on his face who was calling.
“Who is it?” Storm asked, his eyes never leaving mine.
Creed looked at me, then at Storm, his face the perfect image of regret and misery. “It’s Kieran. Kieran Nightingale.”
“Oh, would you tell him I’ll be slightly delayed?” I snickered. “Just tell him I have something to take care of.”
Within seconds, Storm grabbed the phone from Creed with his healthy hand, crushing it right in front of my eyes, while my laughter rang around us.
“He’s going to be such a good father,” I said, looking straight at Storm. The roar that erupted from his chest would have scared a lesser person, but nothing he did scared me.
Not anymore.
I had nothing to lose.
He strolled toward me with the knife still buried deep inside his shoulder, grabbing my chin, and lifting it up to look into his eyes.
“He is never going to touch my children.”
“But they’re not yours,” I mumbled. “They’re my kids, Storm. You have no rights to them.”
His thumb buried itself in my cheek, pressing harder than necessary, his anger speaking louder than words.
“We’re done, Storm,” I said, shaking him off of me.
“We’re done when I say we’re done,” he argued. “And you and I,” he bent down, biting on my lower lip, “we are never going to be done, Sunshine. Stabbing me doesn’t change that.”
Maybe for him it didn’t. But knowing that he slept with our enemy just two weeks after I was presumed dead, even if he knew I was still alive, changed everything for me.
The love I felt, it turned into something ugly, something vicious. It turned into fury.
4
STORM
I wanted to hurt her.I wanted her to pay for what she did to me, for what she did to us, but never once did I think that she would look at me with so much hatred, until it bled into the numbness settling in her soul.
I never thought she would look at me with so much coldness. Ice ran through my veins every time I remembered her eyes, the relentless pursuit to hurt me, to show me how much it hurt her.
And fuck, she had every right to be hurt. I thought she was pissed because I slept with someone else after she left me, but this wasn’t it. This hurt, this bursting energy she was driven by, had nothing to do with that.
The cracks in her otherwise perfect armor didn’t appear because I fell into bed with someone else, even if it was Nova. This was about the timing, about my own stupidity and the fact that I slept with someone so close to her alleged death.
She stabbed me.
But the throbbing pain coming from my left shoulder wasn’t what bothered me as I sat here in front of her cell. Metal bars separated the two of us, her back turned toward me. Even though it seemed as if she slept, I knew her well enough to know that she was wide awake, waiting for me to leave.
But I wasn’t leaving. Not this time.
I thought I could have it all—pretend for a little while that she didn’t mean anything, save the Club, catch this Belladonna person, and get back in Ophelia’s good graces.
I thought I could keep her around without compromising anything, but the moment I saw the expression on her face when she saw me with Nova, I understood how much I fucked up. I understood because if I saw her sitting like that with another man, especially someone who I didn’t trust, who probably screwed me over, I would have killed him.
I wouldn’t ask questions or wait for an explanation; he would be a dead man the moment he laid his hands on my girl. Yet I did the same. I fucked this entire thing up, and I couldn’t sacrifice the two of us anymore for the sake of everyone else.
