Even if I’m wounded on every inch of my body, too drained of blood to even defend myself, at least I got to touch her one last time.
She shudders against me. “You want to kill him? You’ll have to go through me,” she says through gritted teeth.
And I am so fucking proud of her.
My little Firefly. God, I love this woman.
“What?” Silas growls. “How? How the fuck could you love the man who killed our sister?”
“Because I’ve always loved him!” she yells, tears staining her pretty blue eyes. “He didn’t kill Mavis. She fell, and I’ve seen the proof.”
“Where?” her mom asks.
Grey runs up to us and holds out his phone. She snatches the phone out of his hand, throwing distrustful glances at him between watching the footage. We all know what she’s about to witness, and I can see the truth reflected in her very eyes.
How death lingers and haunts us all.
“That night, he made a pact with Mavis,” she says. “They’d jump together and forget about the people they were in love with.”
Heath swallows, and his face mars with confusion. “What?”
“She loved you,” Aspen says, looking at him. “Just like Levi loved me.”
Heath’s eyes gloss over as though he’s seen her ghost wink at him from the other side. “Oh God …”
Aspen looks down at me, and my fingers instinctively reach for those beautiful freckles crossing her face like the stars on the horizon.
I do.
I love her so much it hurts to see the tears form in her eyes.
Because I never wanted her to cry over me.
“But Levi couldn’t do it. He couldn’t let me go,” she says, talking to the others, while looking explicitly at me. “And it caused her to fall.”
The silence around us is like a calm wave to my bludgeoned soul.
“All this time, he’s been trying to make us hate him so he could die alone, just like her,” she says through gritted teeth, tears rolling down her cheeks. “But he doesn’t deserve to die, and I won’t let you kill him.” She swallows and strengthens her grip on me, as if she wants to tell the world she’d go down to hell with me if she had to.
“Levi, is that … true?” Mom asks, her gun quaking in her hand.
I nod. “I have always only ever wanted her. I love her so, so much that it nearly killed me. And I would have died for her if she wanted me to.” I look into her eyes, cupping her face with bloodied fingers, and she smiles against the palm of my hand. “I would jump off that cliff and go to hell and back through a rain of bullets if it meant I could kiss these lips one last time.”
She leans in close enough that I can practically feel the universe radiating off her skin.
Fuck it.
I pull her close and press my lips to hers in front of everyone.
I don’t care anymore if they know.
If it’ll kill my family to see me with her.
If it’ll make hers want to kill me even more.
I’m done running away.
And I kiss her with all I have, so hard that I don’t even remember they exist at all.
