Page 25 of Venom & Vanity

I press my palm flat against his chest. He shudders like I've burned him and goes absolutely still, every muscle locked. I feel his heartbeat under my hand, fast and unsteady, telling me things his face will not.

“You say I hurt you because of a lie,” I say. Quiet now. The anger has burned down to something more honest and more dangerous. “What about how you hurt me?”

He steps back. My hand falls.

“What?” The word comes out like something has knocked it loose from him.

I look at him and I hate this. I hate every single thing about this moment, about standing in front of him with my chest cracked open and my eyes burning and years of silence about to end.

Admitting this means admitting that I let him in.

That behind every wall I built and every distance I carefully maintained there was a place I stopped guarding and he is the reason I stopped.

Losing my mother nearly ended me. I swore I would never hand anyone the power to do that again, and then this boy with his green eyes and his stubborn jaw and his refusal to be careful with things walked straight past every defense I had and made himself at home in a part of me I hadn't known was still open.

And then he vanished.

And the world told me he chose to.

“You left me.” I say each word separately, deliberately, with no room for misunderstanding. “You left and the world said you chose it and I had no reason not to believe them because you were gone and you didn't come back.” My voice is trying to fracture and I won’t let it. “You blame me for something I have no knowledge of, but you can't stand here and say sorry for what you did to me?”

His eyes shine with fear, genuine fear, not the island kind, not the survival kind. The kind that comes from being seen.

I step back so I can hold all three of them in my sight at once.

“Did you honestly think I would submit this easily to strangers?” The words come out with everything I have been holding behind it. “It took me a moment. I'll admit that. Because the last thing I expected was to wake up on a prison island and find myself looking into the eyes of people I actually knew.” I let that settle. Let them hear it. “You two.” I look at Daddy, at Sir. “Took me longer. But I got there.”

Then I look at Grumpy.

“You,” I say, “I knew the second I opened my eyes.”

The silence that follows is the loudest thing this island has produced.

“I let you do what you did…” I say, and my voice breaks on the first word and I can’t stop it now, it’s happening, years of carrying this alone is happening whether I want it to or not. “I let you use my body and take your pound of flesh because I thought you had earned the right to be angry. Because I thought maybe I owed you something even if I didn't understand what.” Tears are burning at the backs of my eyes and I refuse to blink. “But I will not stand here and be convicted of something I didn't do. I will not.”

“Snow—” Grumpy starts.

“I loved you.” My voice breaks clean in half on the last word and the woods go so still I can hear the water and the wind and nothing else. “You broke my heart when you disappeared. I don't mean I was sad. I don't mean I missed you. I mean you broke something in me that I have been trying to find the pieces of ever since.” I see him stumble and Sir's hand closes around his arm. I push forward because if I stop now, I will never say it. “I didn't just help search for the lost heirs. I joined every search party I could find an excuse to join. I called in every favour my father had. I spent eight months looking for you, Bastian, because I couldn’t make myself believe that you left on purpose.”

His name in my mouth. His real name.

The mask can’t hide what it does to his face.

“And now you’re standing in front of me telling me I’m the reason you’re here.” I look at all three of them, every wall I own lying in rubble around my feet. “So tell me the truth. All of it. Because I’m done pretending and being your little fucking play thing. I’m not going to be punished for a crime no one will even tell me about!”

The silence stretches.

And somewhere underneath the fury and the grief and the years of damage between us, something shifts in their eyes as something inside me hardens. I keep my walls up and my feelings on lockdown. I’ll never give them the power to be the Trojan horse and infiltrate my walls like the Greeks did to Troy.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

DOC

I’ve been many things in my life.

A father. A friend. A man who made choices he can’t take back and has spent years learning to live in the wreckage of them. I’ve been the kind of man who walks into a room and changes the temperature without meaning to, or sometimes meaning to, depending on what the situation requires.

But I’ve never been unprepared.