Page 85 of Heir of Broken Souls

He snorts. “Gods, Delilah, you think I’m made of glass and it’s so fucking hypocritical.”

I take his words like a whip, holding my body rigid as I wait for the pain to explode across my body. “I’m sorry for what I did, Axel. It was selfish and I truly am sorry we didn’t tell you sooner but please stop?—”

“Stop what? Calling you out on your shit? You’re quick to call out?—”

“Axel,please,” I beg.

“—everyone else around you, but you never take accountability for your own unhealthy habits. Tell me, when was the last time you allowed yourself to cry?”

“I said stop,” I whisper, but it comes out more like a plea than a demand.

He pushes, getting in my face, “When?”

“Stop it.”

“I said?—”

“I heard what you said!” I scream with such anger he stumbles back a step. “I fucking heard you and I asked you to stop!”

He points an accusatory finger my way. “Do not come to me and talk about suppressing feelings, not when you’re the very definition of it.”

What he doesn’t know is that Knox already broke that barrier. That hedidconfront me, but everyone else seems to have begun confronting me at the same time too, and I cannot handle it.

It makes panic take hold within me, so much so I truly do act a fool as I whisper, “He wouldn’t want this.”

Axel stiffens but I continue, fear taking the reins of my tongue.

“Ace wouldn’t want this for you. He wouldn’t?—”

Before I can so much as blink Axel shoves off the railing, getting in my face. “Watch your fucking mouth,” he snarls.

“No!” I shove his chest away as hard as I can, ignoring his flash of shock as he stumbles. “I’m tired of dancing around the truth! Ace would fucking hate this! He would despise everything we have become and all that?—”

“It doesn’t matter what Ace would have wanted because he isdead!” Axel roars.

The cords in his neck strain, his skin flushing a deep crimson. The grief that he has been drowning in liquor bubbles over.

“He isdead.” The words rip from his throat, husky and broken. “It no longer matters what Ace would have wanted because he is dead.” His voice stumbles on the last word. “And he is never coming back.”

My heartbeat rings in my ears, chanting that I’ve pushed him too far, that I was once again selfish and that I?—

He pushes off the railing, stumbling as if he’s drunk on grief before he stops and cranes his neck. “You want to know why I drink?”

Swallowing thickly, my back stiffens, as if it knows that I’m about to be ruined emotionally, that Axel’s words will tear me to shreds.

“Why?”

“Because with him gone…I no longer care if I wake up in the morning.”

My heart lurches, tears springing forth as I take a step forward. To do what, I’m unsure.

These words are eerily similar to what he told me, what he drunkenly confessed in the bathtub. But a drunk confession while he’s sobbing about his dead brother is one thing—a sober confession is another. All I know is that the pain in his voice, the grief, the sorrow radiating off him—I need to make it stop. I need to?—

“You cannot save me, Delilah,” he says hoarsely. “Because I no longer wish to be saved.”

“Don’t say that.” I gasp. “Do not?—”

“I thought you wanted me to share,” he says coldly, finally turning to face me as he walks backwards, holding out his arms. “There’s the truth you all so desperately want from me. I wishIhad died that night.”