Tainted Forever (Tainted Knights 5)

“Leave her alone, man. I really don’t want to have to hurt you. But if you don’t get out now, I will.” Caleb, my gentle giant, who wouldn’t hurt a fly unless provoked, was all growly now, and I knew he wasn’t making an idle threat. My stepbrother could take a lot of shit being tossed at him, but if something were to hurt me or his twin, he could become a rage monster.

At that moment, that monster was close to the surface, and I prayed Jace would listen to reason and just go.

“Gray, please!” Kassa begged her fiancé. “Get him and let’s go.”

I could almost feel the heat coming from Jace now, he was so close, but if he touched me, I knew I was going to shatter into a billion tiny pieces on the floor. There would be no putting me back together again, no matter how hard I tried. Yet I couldn’t move, was frozen in place right in front of my open bedroom door.

“Kin, I’m begging you.” His gruff voice stirred my hair. “I’ll do anything, but please don’t break up with me.”

He skimmed his hands down my arms, and I began to tremble. He pressed his forehead into the back of my head, and I suddenly couldn’t breathe for the pure agony that was pushing down on me. I wanted to shake him off, wanted to scream and rage at him for doing this to us, for not loving me enough. I felt like I was choking, the lump of emotion in my throat so colossally huge, it was killing me.

Spots appeared around my vision and I knew I was going to pass out, that I was going to fall on my face at his feet, but there was nothing I could do to p

revent it.

Then suddenly, I could breathe again. Caleb was wrapping me up in his arms, taking my full weight. I sucked in life-giving air and found the energy to lift my head to see what had happened to Jace.

Gray had him in a headlock, wrestling him down the stairs. Kassa was openly crying, begging her brother to just let her take him home, but Jace was struggling with everything in him to fight his way free so he could get back to me.

“Kin, you’re my everything. Don’t fucking do this.”

Caleb pulled my face back against his chest, his huge hands rubbing soothingly up and down my back as my entire body shook with the force of my silent sobs.

That was the first time Jace had ever told me I was his everything, yet I didn’t believe him. If I were his everything, none of this would have happened. We wouldn’t be going through any of this. I would have been back in California, blissfully waiting for him to come back to me, and not having my heart torn out of my chest while it was still weakly beating.

--

Hours passed. Hauntingly quiet hours where I cried silently in my room. Caleb came in to check on me every twenty minutes or so, and every time, he found me in the same place. Curled into a fetal position, tears pouring out of me like an endless waterfall. My eyes throbbed, and my throat felt blistered and raw from my silent screams of anguish.

Jace was gone.

I was glad.

I wanted him to come back.

I needed to be as far away from him as was humanly possible.

I wanted him to hold me, to tell me he loved me, that we were going to be okay.

I wanted to go back in time and stop myself from ever going to that stupid bar in Bristol with Caleb all those years ago and meeting Jace for the first time.

I wanted to relive our first kiss over and over again.

My head was all over the place, and I couldn’t figure out if I was glad he was gone or pissed he hadn’t fought harder for me. Looked like it wasn’t nearly as clear as I’d thought it was earlier.

Logically, I knew no matter how strong and determined he might have been, Grayson Knight was just as big a beast as my stepbrother. Only Gray was a hundred times harder to fight because he simply didn’t give a fuck about anyone except Kassa. Caleb, even in full-on beast mode, cared about virtually everyone in the universe—with a few exceptions.

Logic had no place in my mind right then, however, and I was furious with Jace for not having come back for me. For not making me listen. For not proving to me that I was his number one priority, the one person in the world he would give up everything for just to have me.

It wasn’t even like I would let him give up everything. I just wanted him to prove to me that he was willing to make that kind of sacrifice, damn it.

But he didn’t. He never would.

Because he might love me, he might even need me…but not enough. He could live without me. He did it once; he would again. Maybe he would even miss me, but in the end, Jace would be able to pick up the pieces and move on with his life.

And that realization was killing me.

“…she’s really got me worried.” Caleb’s whispering finally got through to me, and I lifted lashes that felt like they were being weighed down with fifty-ton barbells to find my stepbrother standing at the foot of my bed, his cell phone pressed to his ear. “I don’t know what to do, Ang. I’ve never seen her fall apart like this. Not even when Abby died.”