Slade’s hands hang at his sides, and something ripples in his eyes. Something I can’t read. “What are you saying, Auren?”
Everything.
I’m saying everything.
Because there’s no time. Because I’m supposed to leave. Because he’s leaving too.
I take a deep, shaky breath. “All my life, I have been coveted or bought or possessed because of the gold that drips from my fingers and lusters my skin. I have been used and kept, and I learned to accept that life. I learned to accept that the best I deserved was Midas and that I shouldn’t ever hope for more because I knew just how much worse it could be.”
An angry look slashes across the shadows of Slade’s face, his mouth pressing together above his stubbled chin.
My wet lashes drag against my cheek with every blink. “But then you came along. And never, not once, has anyone looked at me the way you do.”
He goes tense, breath bated to hear what I have to say. There’s a long pause held between us, like hands cupping water, desperate not to let a single drop leak out. “And what way is that?”
“Like I’m a person instead of a trophy. Like you don’t just look at me and see gold,” I answer honestly. “That’s never happened before,” I admit with a sad smile. “You challenged me to be more than what I’ve been made into. You showed me how to see the world without my blindfold.”
He shifts on his feet, allowing a slash of light shining from the balcony doors to land across his black-clad chest. “Good.”
“But when you did that, you didn’t just open my eyes. You shifted my vision entirely, and now, all I keep seeing is you.”
My voice cracks with the truth, but I let it spread, let it split, just as I’ve been torn down the middle for weeks. It’s so hard, standing here in this raw honesty, bleeding out words. But for better or for worse, I’ve chosen a path in that forked road.
“I was going to just run away. To continue denying and doubting this…thing between us. I kept telling myself that you lied to me, that you’ll fool me like Midas did, that you can’t be trusted. But you’re under my skin and stuck in my head, and I’m furious with you for that.”
Slade rears back and his eyes flash. “Why?”
A shaky sigh slips from my lips. “I’m furious because every waking hour, every sleepless night, I’m trying to convince myself that running away is the best option, but I’m failing at it. I have these things inside of me now, this anger and this fear and this want, and I should walk away—I should. But it’s not enough to just get away from Midas anymore, to run and hide. Because you dug around and unraveled me, and now, I want more.”
Tears gleam across my cheeks as they fall. I don’t think Slade is breathing. There’s this look on his face that’s somehow a perfect mix of determination and devastation. His power crackles, and although I brace myself for a wave of sickness, it doesn’t come.
“Auren,” he rasps, just a slip of my name that somehow sounds like a promise rent from his soul.
“I keep blaming you for things so that I can push you away. But you’ve done nothing wrong. Not really. You’ve challenged me and pissed me off and lied, but it’s nothing I didn’t do right back. You’re not the villain in my story.”
“I am,” he says without remorse, his sharp jaw tight with tension. “But I’ll be the villain for you. Not to you.”
“I believe you,” I say immediately, because it’s true. I do believe him, not just in this, but in everything. I can only hope that doesn’t make me the fool.
The moment I say that, Slade takes a step forward. Just one, yet I feel the air between us condense and thicken. As if all these words I’m saying are filling up the divots we’ve created by digging in our heels.
I watch him and he watches me, and in my head, I hear him saying, you are my own good. In the tingle of my lips, I’m feeling the heat of his mouth when he kissed me.
“All my life, men have had me, but I have never had a man.”
The barest of breaths sucks in through his teeth. A stillness passing between us like a fragile pane of glass.
“I am no man.”
“No. You’re more,” I agree. “Because no matter what I do, you cling to my skin and burrow into my conscience, and as angry as I am at you for that, I don’t want to lie to myself anymore. I am sick to death of repression. Of denial. Of holding back. After twenty damn years, I don’t want to tell myself no.”