Page 207 of Darling Venom
When the ghosts swirl together around me, and I feel suffocated.
“Of Kellan,” he concluded.
It struck me how well he knew my broken pieces. So much so, fear spiked inside me. Shot from my heart to my head.
The people I cared about either died or hated me.
This was not a young-adult romance.
My life did not inspire happy endings.
I fought through the doubt, marveling when I managed it. Goosebumps lined my arms. From the cold air. From him. From my rare show of strength.
“You ever think Kellan was strong?” I let the wind carry my words to Tate. “So fucking strong to deal with it as long as he did? Because that’s what I think.”
As much as I pitied him while he lived, it intensified by the end of Darling Venom. I knew his life story now.
His fears. His triumphs. His losses.
But there was something that struck me once I reached the last page. He’d sewn a thread of hope into his words. The kind that didn’t speak of a man on the brink of ending his life.
Or maybe the hope was that he’d end his life.
“The book.” Tate cleared his throat. “Does it say why?”
“No.”
I swallowed, happy I couldn’t see him because I knew there’d be disappointment on his face, and it’d gut me.
He swore, losing the rhythm of his pushes. “We’ll never find peace, will we?”
I couldn’t accept that. Couldn’t stomach Tate’s suffering when he wore the weight of Kellan’s decision on his shoulders every day, and it left him battered before the sun set.
“Kellan wanted to die. He planned his death long before I entered his life, and even after he met me, he knew he would go through with it. You couldn’t have prevented it.” As I said the words, I realized they didn’t feel like a lie told to temper Tate’s pain. Maybe it was wishful thinking, yet I couldn’t shake the idea that they were true.
And if they are…?
It meant I couldn’t have prevented Kellan’s death, either.
A tear dropped to my lip and bled across the surface. I swiped my tongue out, collecting the evidence. My shoulders shook. Clutching the chains tighter, I tried to hide it as Tate continued to push me, but I knew he saw.
He always saw me.
I couldn’t have prevented Kellan’s death.
The more I thought it, the more I wanted it to be true.
The more I believed it to be true.
I was a bookmark in the middle of a novel already written. Delaying the inevitable. It was as if Kellan had written Darling Veno
m knowing he would end his life, that I would blame myself for his death, and that he didn’t want me to.
If Tate wanted to heal, he needed to read it, too.
“You should read it,” I whispered.
Reluctantly.
