I raise my hands and look at them like they’re monstrous. Heinous, just as my crimes. “Everyone wanted me dead.”
I curl my fingers underneath my hoodie and tear it over my head, letting the rain fall down on my naked chest. The last piece of my sin cast aside.
But as her eyes glide over my tatted body, they settle on the scar she left on my arm when I first caught her.
“You see it now? This is the proof you were looking for.”
“Ghost,” she murmurs between heavy breaths.
“He was a means to an end. Levi Torres couldn’t ever have you, so I created Ghost. To ravish. To control. To claim you for myself. I took and took and tookeverythingfrom you because I fantasized for so long what it would be like for you to be mine, that it broke me. It twisted me into someone I don’t recognize, but I don’t regret it for one fucking second, Aspen.” My nostrils flare, my voice unhinged. “Do you hear me? I don’t fucking regret one second of my torment, because I finally got to touchyou. Because I know, somewhere deep down, that girl who once pined for me wanted it too, even if she didn’t know it was me.”
“You knew all this time that I had a crush on you when I was younger…” she murmurs.
“Yes, I remember the way you looked at me. Back when we were still playing around in the woods behind your parents’ house.” I swallow. “I just didn’t fucking understand because I was too young, too dense.”
She swallows.
“But I understand now. Too late.” My fingers dig into my flesh. “I know what I’ve done. I couldn’t give up on you, and that’s why she died. But if I had to make the choice all over again … I’d do it again in a heartbeat,” I say.
Her hands ball up into fists.
I snort. “Hating me was the easiest thing for you … so I gave you what you wanted.”
Tears well up in her eyes.
“A ghost to haunt you, to relinquish you of the guilt of wishing me dead.”
“I don’t,” she mutters.
“You do. Because I’m a killer. I hurt you in a way that can’t be undone.”
She steps closer, so I take one back.
Droplets of rain roll down my lips. “Don’t. I tried to give you a way out. To make it easier for you to let go. Because I fucking can’t, Aspen. I can’t give up on you. Not now. Not ever. Evenafter waiting for years, I still stayed away to protect you. God, I tried so damn hard to get over you. But my heart has always,alwaysbeen yours. And I would rather die now than live the rest of my life without your love. So please … please …” I push the tears back. “Let me die like I deserve.”
I take a step back and another one, until there’s no way back. No way to undo what I’m about to do.
“I’m keeping my promise. After all, a deal is a deal.” A simple smile is my last goodbye to the girl who deserved so much better from me.
But the second I open my arms and fall backward, ready to face the same fate as the one I killed, she runs toward me.
“Fuck the deal!”
With my arms opened wide, she jumps into me, wrapping her arms around my body as we plummet toward the abyss.
CHAPTER 51
Aspen
The time tofall is endless when you’re plummeting to your death.
Still, I hold on tight, coiling my fingers together behind his muscular back as we fall and fall into the abyss down below.
If I die today, I don’t regret my choice. I made it knowing full well I could lose my life. But when he spread his arms and leaned backward, I knew I couldn’t let him go alone.
I close my eyes and hold on tight, listening to his heartbeat for the final time.
A heartbeat I once used to hear so often I forgot what it sounded like.
