Page 245 of Darling Venom
I stared at my toes, wiggled them because it gave me something to do other than cry, and returned my attention to Tate when I remembered how to breathe.
His eyes were already on me. I felt the full force of them and sucked in a breath. They bore a question. I had a hunch as to what it was, but I didn’t know whether I wanted him to ask it or bury it six feet under, never to be heard from again.
Ask it, I decided.
Ask me what I was doing on that roof the night I met Kellan.
Please, Tate.
You already know.
I swallowed. “I used to think about his last moments. The ones before the fall. What ran through his mind? Was he scared? Was he excited? Or was he just plain… over it? Maybe even all the above.”
“And now you don’t?”
“Now I know better.” I propped both feet on the globe, pulled my knees to my chest, and locked my arms around them once I found my balance. Physically, at least. “For starters, it’s the worst form of torture to imagine the moments before someone you love died. I don’t recommend it. Not even to the dude who invented the guillotine. But also, I think Kellan planned his death far before either of us ever knew, and in that plan, he included a path for us to heal.”
Tate held a palm out. “Please cough up the directions and a map, because I’m feeling left the fuck out.”
I reached out toward his hand as if I could touch it from this distance. “Darling Venom. That’s the map. The apology. The plan.”
Tate had moved, almost as if to meet my outstretched fingers, but at my words, he veered to Jupiter.
Luck. Optimism. Abundance.
I’d take any of those right now, please and thank you.
He settled on top of the half-orange, half-green globe. Not that I could make the colors out at this hour.
But I knew.
Just as I knew he would decline any invitation to read his brother’s words.
“I’ll pass.”
See?
I decided then and there that I would not give up until Tate Marchetti read Darling Venom. It was my only weapon in this war to heal him.
I lowered my hand. “I think Kellan wrote the book for you to read. With you in mind, Tate.”
“Doubt he left me anything other than a big fuck-you laundry pile. We weren’t close. Besides, he gave the keys to the drawers to you.”
I rested my chin on my knees, studying him. Tate’s blue-grays glittered with turmoil. He parked a fist on his thigh. Two feet and an ocean of doubt separated us.
I suspected he was keeping something from me. We were going around in circles. Hiding things from each other. Unable to seek peace without truth.
It would be hypocritical to demand that Tate cough up his secret without offering mine, and yet… I planned on doing exactly that.
Because my secret might end us.
It shouldn’t, but it might.
“I don’t believe it. I don’t believe, for a second, that Kellan left you nothing. I think you’re keeping something from me.”
Tate’s mouth pressed in a tight line.
I bit the inside of my cheek, waiting.
