“Okay, that’s enough. The neighbors will talk.” The video suddenly cut off as if their mother had turned off the recorder and gone to discipline her children.
I tripped backward, falling on my ass and finding it hard to breathe.
Shit.
Shit.
Shit!
Icy claws sliced my back as panic quickly flooded my bloodstream.
Gem’s laughter still rang in my ears. Growing louder and louder, a direct contradiction to the heavy silence in the darkened library.
I couldn’t...
I can’t breathe.
My heart felt like it would explode from my chest. I couldn’t take it. I couldn’t handle seeing what she’d been like. How carefree she’d been. How light and young and happy.
Before me.
Before I’d imprisoned her, used her, dimmed out the light that’d been so wonderfully bright inside her.
I’d done more than just captured her—I’d snuffed out that light inside her. I’d done so many unforgivable things, but that? God...that was the worst.
I’d changed her.
I’d made her sad and scared and—
“Fuck!” I launched to my feet and backed away, tripping into Storymaker’s throne as vertigo hit me. Gemma’s giggle, her light-hearted wonderful goddamn giggle, continued to echo in my ears.
I drove both hands into my hair, ignoring my broken arm twingeing, doing my best to yank that giggle free. To rip out everything I’d ever done to her. Doing my best to ignore who I’d been, what I was, and what I’d become because of her.
I growled at nothing. At everything.
I wanted to kill Storymaker and all the Fable guests all over again for taking my one chance at happiness and stealing it before I’d even had a chance to try.
“Kas? Kas, what is it? What’s wrong?” Gem swooped to her feet, placing her recorder on the desk beside the letter opener. I waited for her to grab the weapon. I wanted her to. I wanted her to be armed and threaten me. To force me to keep my distance all while I fucking unraveled.
But she didn’t.
She came toward me, arms open, worry blazing in her stare. Worry for me. Kindness for me. So brave. So forgiving, yet...no sign of that effortless happiness she’d had with her brother, in her home, far, far away from me.
I wanted to be sick.
I wanted to run.
Instead, I shot out of the chair and stumbled backward. My legs locked, and I slammed against the wall. The same wall where my blood stained the wallpaper and signs of an earlier breakdown whispered through my memories.
I flinched as something teased on the outskirts of my thoughts.
Something black and grave; something I didn’t want to recall.
“Stay away from me, Gem.” I braced myself, twitching with determination, doing my best to keep my memories at bay.
“It’s okay.” She held up her hands, acting as if I were a cougar about to attack. “I keep forgetting that all of this will be so new to you. You’ve lived in the place without TV or movies. You’ve probably never seen a home video before—”
“It’s not that.” I bit out, doing my best to get control of my hurt, my temper, the part of me still so fucking possessive of her. “I know what a video is.”
Panic licked through me, building into an attack. My nostrils flared, inhaling too fast, doing my best not to give in to a blackout that could arrive at any second because she was too much. Far, far too much for my pitiful mind to handle.
God, she’d been so happy.
So free.
She’d had everything I’d always wanted. A family who joked and jested. A sibling who was whole and not scarred. A home that protected and kept her safe at night instead of housed a hundred monsters.
I was jealous.
So fucking jealous.
And I was also horrified.
Horrified that I’d changed her from a giggling, happy woman into one who watched me as if her very life was on the line.
Which it was.
I was so, so close to snapping.
I could feel it.
The looseness of my psyche.
The shadows of my past.
The hissing memories just waiting to snatch me.
She touched me.
I sucked in a tattered groan.
She cupped my cheek and interrupted my chaos, and...
And I couldn’t stop myself.
Grabbing her by the wrist, I spun her around and shoved her against the wall.
She let out a little squeak as I placed my palm on her sternum, keeping her trapped. Her eyes widened, the hazel color swirling with golds and greens, hesitation and wariness but no fear, no hate.
“How do you do it?” I hissed. “How do you look at me like that after everything I’ve done?”
She flinched, locking her fingers around my wrist where my hand pinned her against the wall. Licking her lips, she whispered, “Because I see you.”
“But you don’t. You don’t see. You don’t know. Not really.”
“I know enough.”
“But you don’t.” I bared my teeth. “You don’t understand that it’s fucking killing me knowing you’re not safe around me. That I lie in bed at night, wanting you so damn much, but not knowing how to treat you. I’m terrified that any moment, I’ll snap and hurt you. I’m afraid, Gem. All the goddamn time. I’m afraid because one kiss from you, a single passing touch, and my mind is no longer mine to control. It lets go. It remembers. And when it remembers, I blank.” I added more weight to my hand, driving her harder against the wall. “I don’t know how much longer I can take this. I feel like I’m going around in circles. I want to keep you, but I can’t. I need you to go, but I honestly don’t know how to say goodbye. But you have to go. You need to leave because I’ve gone and done something really fucking stupid.” I cut myself off, panting hard.