Chapter 29

Days passed, and rage and exhaustion became my entire existence. When I wasn’t so tired I could hardly stand, an anger unlike anything I’d ever felt consumed every part of me.

I hated her.

I hated her.

I hated that she’d done this to me and my friends.

Even as I fell asleep in the bed where we’d lain together and pressed my face into her pillow to catch a scent of her, I hated her. Even when I wandered through the city I tried so hard to love, everything reminded me of how much I hated her—from the stupid parks to someone wearing a pink backpack.

I kneeled on the kitchen”s tile floor, my hands stained with red and soap as I scrubbed. Next to me, half a dozen bright red paper towels sat in the trash can with a broken wine bottle. I’d already picked the shards of glass out of the palms of my hands, and I needed to clean the blood off the ground before Willa came home.

After a long day at the barn with Ghost, I’d wanted to come home to a huge, warm glass of blood and a long, hot shower. My hands shook with exhaustion and the bottle slipped from my hands the moment I pulled it out of the fridge.

It was our last bottle of blood, too, which meant I needed to call Holland or make my way to a hospital on my own. My gums ached with hunger and my veins felt like they were full of acid instead of blood.

“Hey! Oh.” I turned when Willa opened the front door, blinking rapidly at the overwhelming scent of blood. Behind her, Wren cleared his throat.

“Fuck.” My shoulders slumped and I trembled. “I’m sorry. It slipped out of my hand, and I’m going to get more tonight.”

Willa’s brow furrowed and she crossed the room to squat in front of me, taking the soapy sponge out of my hands and pulling me to my feet. “It’s just blood, Sophie.”

I was shaking so badly I couldn’t answer.

Willa frowned. “Okay, let’s wash your hands. Wren, can you finish what’s on the ground?”

“Oh, god, no you don’t have to do that.” I spun toward Wren, guilt pooling in my stomach. The last thing I wanted was for the man I killed to clean up my mess.

Wren caught my hands, shaking his head. Concern filled his green eyes. “It’s just blood. I can do it. Go with Willa,” he said.

I blinked through my tears while Willa moved me toward the sink. “Tell me what happened,” she said as she dunked my hands under the stream of water.

“Addie died,” I said. It was the only thing that mattered. “Eliza killed her.”

Willa frowned. “I think it’s time to let her go.”

I whimpered. “I can’t. God, why can’t I let go? I hate her. I hate her.”

“I don’t know how to help you.” Willa pulled my hands back and grabbed a towel to wipe them off, barely keeping me from dissolving into a hysterical mess on the ground. “What is it about her?”

“When she smiles, when she laughs, when she stops focusing all her attention on her pain—there’s a different Eliza beneath all that. And I think I’m in love with that version of her.”

“And yet, that’s not the version of her that killed our best friend,” Willa reminded me gently.

“I don’t love that version,” I cried. “I don’t understand what’s wrong with me.”

Willa opened her mouth, then clamped it shut.

Before I could apologize, Wren stepped out of the kitchen. “There is nothing wrong with you, Sophie.”

My heart leaped into my throat, threatening to suffocate me as Wren approached and sat perpendicular to me and Willa, who watched him with soft, cautious eyes. Wren fidgeted with his hands in his lap and his eyes darted nervously around the room before settling on me.

“The night I met Willa, I was going to kill myself,” he said.

Willa’s breath hitched. My heart shattered. Wren had depression, and struggled with his will to live sometimes, but I never knew it was that bad. My bottom lip trembled.

“If she were even a minute later,” he continued, “I would have.”

“Wren, I-” I started.

He held up his hand to keep me from interrupting him again. “For a while, I thought the small moments of relief she offered me would be enough. I didn’t think about how much I was hurting her each time I took a step back or closed the door in her face, or used her to ease my agony.”

I glanced at Willa and was surprised to see only softness in her eyes as she watched her partner speak about the darkest part of their relationship.

Wren’s deep breath brought my attention back to him. “I will forever regret what I put Willa through, the doubt I made her feel, the fear she had every day she was with me. It wasn’t fair to her, and all it took was a choice on my end to stop—to put my self-worth above zero, to value her more than all I’d ever known. I feel fairly confident in saying she loved one part of me, the part that didn’t want to die. The other part almost destroyed her.” He glanced at Willa, who nodded. “You can’t truly only love one part of someone. They have to let go of the dark parts. She has to lose the part of her that killed Addie for you to even… begin to think about her again.”

“I don’t want to think about her ever again,” I cried.

Wren hummed. “I think it’s important to remember that, as vampires, our morality is much different from human’s. Addie stayed with Holland, even when her safe option was to go home. Willa chose me, even if I couldn’t promise her perfect. Addie is going to be okay—even if Eliza didn’t know that—and I think that’s why some part of you is clinging to the happiest parts of her.”

I frowned. “I want to hate her.”

“I know. All I’m saying is take your time with your emotions. I would hate to see your light go out, Sophie.”

“You think I have light?” My words shook.

Wren chuckled. “More than any of us.”

I resisted the urge to throw myself into Wren’s arms and thank him a thousand times. Instead, I simply mouthed, “Thank you.”

That was enough.