On the lower shelves, my aunt had enough firearms and weapons to arm a small village. I couldn’t look at them without wondering how many of those guns were loaded with bullets instead of salt rounds. Bear slept beneath them, his bed wedged between cases of ammo and stacks of unfinished paintings.
“Do you need something?” Faith asked.
“I wanted to ask you a few things. If that’s okay.”
Bear lifted his head from the dog bed, as if he was waiting to see if she would invite me in. She glanced over her shoulder, frowning.
“My room is a little—”
“My room is messy, too,” I blurted out. ‘At least, it used to be.”
Faith stepped back and opened the door. “I was going to say private.”
This is going well.
“I can go.” I started to turn around.
“It’s fine.” My aunt opened the door wider and gestured for me to come inside. “You must have a lot of questions. I never thought your mother would wait this long to tell you the truth.” She looked away.
“I guess she never got the chance. Now you’re the only family I have left, except for my mom’s sister, and she and my mother weren’t close.”
Faith crossed the room and leaned against one of the shelves. “I remember Diane. She was as bitchy as they come.”
I laughed, and a smile tugged at the corner of Faith’s mouth, before disappearing just as quickly.
“Diane isn’t your only family,” she said.
“Don’t.” I raised my hand to stop her. She was talking about my father. “Please.”
Faith busied herself at the shelves, checking the labels on the containers to make sure they were all facing the same direction.
“I wanted to know when it happened. The kidnapping. You went into hiding after that, right?” I couldn’t ask her what I really wanted to know. If her kidnapping was the reason my dad left.
She took a deep breath. “I went into hiding for other reasons.”
And my dad left for other reasons.
Faith stopped turning the jars and was silent for a long moment. “My life wasn’t always like this. Everything changed when I met Archer. He was handsome and charming, and I was young and stupid. Your parents had been married for about a year, and your mom disliked him right away. She told me you couldn’t trust a man who didn’t like dogs.”
Bear’s ears perked up.
“But I was already falling in love with him by then, and I didn’t listen.” She looked back at me. “I should have.”
“So she was right about him?”
“I met Archer at the farmer’s market, but we didn’t meet accidentally. He knew I’d be there, just like he knew I loved chocolate chip cookies and disaster movies—and that I was part of the Legion. He was a member of the Illuminati, a sleeper.” She paused, as if the subject was too painful to talk about. “His assignment was to earn my trust and find out everything he could about the Legion. And my dreams.”
“Your dreams?”
“I have what’s called prophetic dreams. I see things. Some of them end up happening.” She rubbed her eyes, the shadows beneath them even darker than mine.
I remembered what she said when we saw her paintings.
I hope your dreams are nothing like mine.
“Your paintings.”
She nodded. “After we learned the truth about Archer, Alex sent me into hiding. I didn’t want anything else to do with the Legion.”
My chest tightened at the mention of my father’s name.
“Unfortunately, the Illuminati caught up with me after that. But only once.”
“What gave Archer away?” I asked.
“Your mother was the one who finally put it all together. I should have realized then—” Faith stopped and blinked back tears.
“Some bones should stay buried.”
“Thanks for telling me what happened.” As much as I wanted to know more, it didn’t seem fair after I had dredged up such painful memories.
“Goodnight, Kennedy Rose.”
I stopped, my hand on the doorknob. Hearing her say my middle name—the one my father had chosen—made me wonder what else she knew.
“Why did my dad leave?” I kept my hand on the knob and my back to her. Asking the question out loud was difficult enough.
“It’s complicated, and it’s not really my story to tell. But if it makes you feel any better, he didn’t want to leave.”
I pushed open the door. “It doesn’t.”
11. PROMISES IN THE DARK
As I climbed the rickety stairs to the attic, the railing swayed. Or maybe it was me. After my conversation with Faith, everything felt off-balance.
The room didn’t help. Crossbows and rifles hung from metal hooks on the attic’s pegboard walls—along with knives, Tasers, chains, and a pickaxe. Another reminder of the war we were fighting.
Jared sat on top of a sleeping bag in the midst of it all, with his elbows propped on his knees, staring out the window.
Alara and Elle had claimed the remaining bedroom in the house, with a foldout sofa hidden behind a wall of bundled newspapers. When I saw it, I wondered if my father had ever slept there. Priest and Lukas ended up in my aunt’s great room, surrounding by her disturbing paintings. They seemed to sense Jared and I needed time alone, or they didn’t want to get stuck in the attic with the two of us.
Seeing Jared sitting there with his hands clasped behind his neck, something he only seemed to do when he was worried or uncomfortable, reminded me how vulnerable he really was—and how well he hid it.
Jared turned around as if he sensed me watching him, and his face broke into a smile. “Hey.”
“Hey.” I smiled back and walked toward him.
He pulled me down in front of him, and my legs slid into the empty space underneath his, leaving us barely a foot apart. “I can’t believe you’re really here.” His thumb ran down the side of my face, pausing to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear. He lifted my chin, never taking his eyes off me. When his lips grazed mine, I felt it everywhere.
A soft sigh escaped my lips, as his hand slipped around the back of my neck. The next kiss was hungrier. Fingers trailing over my skin. Teeth tugging at my bottom lip. Hands tangled in my hair. I had forgotten the way the rest of the world melted away when he touched me.
“God, I missed you,” he murmured against my lips.
I nodded, unable to say the words. Because as much as I had missed Jared, I wanted to spare him. I felt damaged and broken in ways no one could fix.
Jared held my shoulders gently and leaned away from me, studying my face. “You’re shaking. Did something happen?”
“I’m just cold.” I tried to keep my expression unreadable.
Jared wrapped his arms around me, heat radiating from his body and into mine. For a moment, I let myself feel it. The warmth and safety I only felt with him.
“I still can’t believe you’re here, and I’m holding you.” He tugged me closer, burying his face in my neck. “I thought about you all the time, Kennedy.”
“I tried not to think about you.” The words slipped out before I could catch them.
His shoulders tensed.
“Not because my feelings changed.” Tears pricked my eyes. “Because it hurt too much. I—”
“What?” Hope edged its way into his voice.
I shook my head and closed my eyes.
Jared pulled me against his chest, and his heart was beating so fast. “Talk to me, Kennedy. You’re scaring me.”
Tell him.
“I was afraid I’d never see you again.”
“You didn’t believe I’d come back for you.” Jared still thought he wasn’t good enough for me—that his mistakes eclipsed everything else about him. He didn’t realize I was the one who wasn’t good enough for him.
Jared let his fingers slide down my arms. “You don’t know how hard—” He inhaled deeply. “It killed me to leave you behind that night. You were hurt, and I just walked away. I left you the
re bleeding.”
“You didn’t have a choice.”
“Yeah.” He sounded disgusted. “That’s what I told myself, for about five minutes. Then I circled back to the interstate and hitched a ride to the closest hospital.”
I lifted my head off his chest and stared at him. “Are you kidding? What if you’d gotten caught?”
“I didn’t care. I needed to know you were okay. But when I got there, you were already in the emergency room. I tried sneaking back to see you, but the cops were all over the place.”
I remembered lying on the hospital bed, praying he was okay. If I had known he was so close.…
“Eventually, they moved you. I watched them wheel you into the elevator. Your face was still muddy and you had this look in your eyes.” Jared bit his lip, his expression pained. “I don’t know how to describe it. You looked so alone, like you didn’t care what happened to you. It took everything I had in me not to go over there. Watching those elevator doors close with you inside—” He shook his head. “Felt like it broke me.”
Every part of me ached for him. I rested my palm on his chest, above his heart.
Jared laid both of his hands on top of mine and held them there. “All I thought about was you, Kennedy, I swear. I didn’t care about the demon or the dead crows or the end of the world. I know it was selfish, but all that mattered was finding you.”