Heartless (Merciless 2)

“I was screaming?” I ask him, although I know it’s true. My throat feels raw and my words are hoarse.

“For almost half an hour,” he tells me with nothing but concern and then visibly swallows as my blood chills. “You wouldn’t wake up.”

It’s been years since I’ve slept through the entire nightmare. Or even since each second played out as if it were an eternity.

Years have passed, but I know the terror was never like that before.

“I don’t know what you need,” Carter intimates to me, sealing me from my thoughts like he’s confessing a sin. I watch his throat as he swallows again. Pulling his arms around my chest I try to lie back down as if this is normal. As if this is okay.

“Hold me,” I tell him although I stare at the ceiling, seeing the vision of my mother looking at me in the haunted memory. Her still alive on the floor even though I know she was dead.

“Please, just hold me,” I plead with him and turn my head, so I can look at him.

Confusion mars his face, but he doesn’t say anything. He only climbs closer to me on the bed and pulls me tighter to him.

I need him to hold me more than I’ve ever needed anything. Other than my mother to come back to me.

Chapter 6

Carter

Today is the first day I see Aria as stronger when she’s with me. And I can’t shake that thought as I enter the den.

I’ve only left her for a few minutes here and there. Staying quiet behind her and watching her every move. But she knows I’m there and each time she’s started to break down, she comes to me.

Of her own free will, she comes to me, asking me to hold her as if my touch could take her pain away.

My poor songbird hasn’t realized my touch only brings pain, and I hope she never does.

The drawing pad shows a clean page. Not a mark lays against the stark white.

With a pen in her hand, she lies on her belly on the rug in front of the fire and stares at the blank sheet as if it’ll speak to her.

I would stay there longer, standing behind the sofa, listening to the crackling of the burning wood, and waiting for her fingers to move across the page, but with a shift in my stance, the floor creaks beneath me and breaks her focus.

With lack of sleep, she’s slow to move, but she does. Sitting up on her knees she faces me, waiting for whatever it is that I have to say.

It’s funny to me how she says when she’s with me she forgets, and life is easier.

When I’m with her it’s the same until she asks questions, and then I remember everything.

“It’s time for the question game again,” I tell her, and she drops the pen, letting it roll off her thigh and onto the floor. The frown that’s marred her tired expression all day stays in place.

“It feels like forever since we’ve played this game,” she says absently. Her tone, her body language, everything about it is off today. It feels dampened, depressed even. More so than I’ve seen her before.

Clearing the tension in my throat and letting my hands clench and unclench I remind her, “It hasn’t been that long since you’ve been out of your cell.”

A smirk tips her beautiful lips up and she stares at me as if defying the fact. “I said it feels like it’s been forever… there’s a difference.”

Her soft gaze trails across the sofa and then back to me. “Am I staying here?”

“You can move wherever you’d like.”

“You haven’t come near me today like you usually do,” she comments and my gaze narrows at her. I recount the day and each and every time she’s come to me. The thrill of her choosing to approach me is dulled by the fact that she realizes things have changed between us.

I search her expression for what she’s thinking. For a hint as to how this will modify her behavior. But I can’t predict her. Not when it comes to what’s between us. And thus, it’s time for me to question her, to try to gauge what she’s thinking based on her own questions.

“That’s not a question,” is my only reply to her.

She shrugs as if it doesn’t matter, and tension spreads through my jaw. “It wasn’t my turn to ask,” she says simply with a calmness in her voice that only increases the strain.

Be gentle with her. I remind myself again.

Jase offers me a lot of advice though, and my typical response is for him to fuck off. Aria watches me as I walk to the sofa and take a seat on the right side. She decides not to move from her place, but she adjusts to sit cross-legged.