She ran for the SUV she’d left parked right outside.
“Salem. Don’t.”
I tried to grab her arm. To hold her. To let her know it was going to be okay.
Shaking me off, she pushed the button on the lock and set Juni into the backseat. Her movements were frantic as she strapped the little girl into place.
She slammed Juni’s door and slipped by me while my heart lodged in my shredded throat.
“I’m sorry,” was all she said as she jerked open the driver’s door, refusing to look at me as she did. She started to climb inside.
I took her by the shoulders and spun her around to face me. “I know you’re scared, but I need you to remember right now what you promised—if you get scared, you run to me. Remember, darlin’。 Run to me. I’m right here. Right here.”
She squeezed her eyes closed like she couldn’t look at me when she said it, the words ragged when she forced them out. “I’m sorry, I can’t stay, Jud. I can’t. I need to go before it’s too late.”
Agony whipped through the atmosphere.
My guts screamed. But it was my heart shouting louder.
Taking her by the face, I forced her to look at me. Begging her to see. To hear. “I’m in this with you, Salem. You’re not alone any longer. Don’t you see? I have you, darlin’。 I have you.”
Her eyes just pressed tighter, girl closing herself off, regressing back to the place where she couldn’t trust. Where her fear reigned, and her hopes didn’t matter. “You have to let me go, Jud. I can’t do this. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
Desperate, the confession I’d been trying to deny to myself came blundering out. “I can’t let you go. I can’t. I love you. I fuckin’ love you, Salem.”
It was true.
So fucking true the verity of it nearly dropped me to my knees.
But I had to remain standing.
Hold up this girl.
Because she choked on the agony, and Salem nearly bent in two, falling apart as she surged forward and pressed her face to my chest and curled those hands in my shirt. Clinging to me as if I were a buoy in the raging, toiling sea, she frantically kissed over my heart. I felt the grief and lost dreams leave her on a sob.
She inhaled, breathed me in, then she pushed her hands against my chest to push me away. “Who said anything about love?”
I staggered back.
Salem swayed. Caught in a torrent of sorrow. Her arm shot out to catch herself on the door before she fell, then she swallowed, built a fortress around herself, and jumped into the driver’s seat.
“I’ll figure out a way to repay you for the car. Both of them.” She was facing forward when she said it, cool and robotic and like she wasn’t tearing me apart. Reaching out, she grabbed the door handle and slammed it shut.
My palms pressed to the window. “Salem. Baby, don’t go. You don’t have to do this.”
Could see her frenzied movements as she fumbled to start the car. I banged at the window. “Salem. Don’t. Don’t run away. Run to me.”
My pleas didn’t penetrate, or maybe they made her fight this harder, the way she refused to look at me as she threw the car in reverse. She peeled out as I flew back and stumbled out of the way.
The SUV jolted forward when she put it in drive, tires squealing as she gunned it on the loose gravel.
Like a fuckin’ fool, I ran behind her. “Salem! Salem! Please.”
Salem.
My entire being writhed.
Writhed in fucking agony because my entire world was fleeing.
Running, the way she did. The way she’d promised she would do.
I was a fool.
I had known it in an instant.
The way this girl’d had me tangled in a beat.
Need.
Possession.
Black. Fuckin’。 Magic.
Nothing but pure, utter devastation.
And my sweet enchantress’s spell? It finally brought me to my knees.
THIRTY-ONE
SALEM
Tears streamed down my face, blurring my sight until it was impossible to see. A fog of torment blinded and obscured, while white-hot blades of heartache cut and slayed, slicing through the middle of me.
It left that vacancy gaping wide.
I felt like I was bleeding out.
“Salem!” I could hear Jud shouting, his pull yanking at my spirit and rending me in two. “Don’t do this.”
I squeezed my hands around the steering wheel like it could keep me on the right path. Make me remember who I was and what I had to protect my daughter from.
To keep from giving myself in a way I never should have in the first place.
Salem.
It banged through my mind and shredded my heart.
I love you. I fuckin’ love you.
Tears blurred my eyes and soaked my face.
He wasn’t supposed to. This wasn’t supposed to happen.
Juni whimpered from the backseat. Quiet and afraid. “Mommy.”
“I know,” I mumbled. “I know.”
And I hated that I did. Hated what I was putting her through.
But I had no other choice, did I?
Not while the terror continued to rip through my consciousness. A foreboding that warned of what was to come. Of what would always be lurking, ready to consume when I allowed myself to get sloppy.
To get comfortable.
Reckless.
If Carlo had found us? If he was responsible?
That thought had me ramming the accelerator to the floor. The tires peeled out on the loose gravel.
I had to get away. Put a lifetime between us and this place. Become someone else. The way I always did.
You exist.
Through the rearview mirror, I saw the hulking, beast of a man lumbering behind us.
As if he were chasing down something real.
I could feel the reverberation of his footfalls as he chased us across the lot.
I pinched my eyes closed like it could stop me from feeling the impact of who he was.
From hearing the shout of his soul.
Shield my heart from the call that screamed every bit as loud as the sirens that had blared through the building. As loud as the instinct that told me I had to go.
That I could never stay.
That for me, there was no such thing as home.
But my spirit?
It thrashed.
A riot that gripped my insides.
It ravaged the hollow space that could never be filled.
“Go,” I whimpered, to him, to myself, to this feeling that welled up.
But it only grew.
Clouding judgement.
Obliterating reason.
“Please,” I cried to myself, like it could sever the pull. That severity that had been there from the moment Jud had found me in the storm.
The SUV bounced across the gravel drive, the tail end skidding as I erratically whipped around the side of the building to the front parking lot.
Reckless.
I headed across the lot toward the exit, trying to force myself through the sludge of agony. I tried to press harder at the accelerator, but a tremor rocked through my leg and shocked through my body.
Salem.
I could still hear him calling my name.
In the middle of the lot, I rammed on the brakes.
Closed my eyes.
Prayed.
Salem.
His voice curled around my being and wrapped me in comfort.
A sob ripped up my throat. I held tighter to the steering wheel and pressed my forehead to the leather as another cry lacerated through my insides.
Fumbling, I put the SUV in park, and my foot was floundering around to engage the emergency brake, my fingers on the door latch and cracked it open.