It wasn’t a request, nor did I wait for a response. I grabbed Marnie’s hand and pulled her out of the room.
“Preston, I’m not in the mood.”
“But you’re pissed off, right?”
“Damn right, I’m pissed off!” She stomped her foot and tried to yank out of my grip when I led her around a corner. “Now let me go back and wallow in my misery.”
“What has misery ever gotten you?” I asked while opening the door to the basement, or as Marnie liked to call it, the dungeon. “Has misery ever comforted you when you were crying and alone? Did misery ever make you feel better the next morning? No. The only thing misery does is drag you down.”
Now anger…that was an entirely different beast.
“What would you know about misery?” She snapped in a way that had my hand twitching to smack her ass. “You don’t care about anything.”
“I care about you.”
Marnie wasn’t the only one stunned. She stopped and stared at me while I wondered why I said that.
“What?”
Fuck. What the hell was I supposed to say now? I didn’t like lying to her, but I didn’t want to tell her the truth either. I was having a hard enough time admitting it to myself.
But the words came out anyway. “It’s called love, Little Bird.”
A fucked up and twisted version, but love was there, sinking its claws into my chest.
“This isn’t love Preston.”
“Then what would you call it?”
Her forehead creased as she thought for a second. “Dark, painful, and wrong?”
“What do you think love is?”
“Not this!”
“You watch too many Hallmark movies.”
I stopped in front of the room at the end of the hall. “You want to see what love is?”
Punching in a code, I pushed the door open and pulled Marnie inside.
Her eyes widened at the sight of the naked, emaciated man huddled in the corner.
“What did you….” She took a few steps closer, then stopped dead as her face paled. “Is that Nash?”
“No, Marnie,” I said, nodding at him. “That’s what love is. It isn’t rainbows and sunshine. It’s messy, feral, and broken. It makes you do things you never thought you would and drives you crazy. Love doesn’t heal your soul. It shatters it into a thousand pieces.” I grabbed my knife out of my pocket and held it out for her. “Then bonds it together with blood and tears.”
Her eyes landed on the hilt and then trailed back over to Nash. “He’s already dead.”
“Does it matter?”
Still, she hesitated.
“It’s time to make a choice, Little Bird. You can keep hiding from who you really are, or you can take this knife and be free for the first time in your life.”
“I’m not like you.”
“No, you’re not.” I grabbed her hand and slapped the knife down into her palm. “But you have the same urges.”
