Island of Glass (The Guardians Trilogy 3)
Going the hell away would be the easy route, and preferable, she admitted. She took the hard one, sat on the wall, looked at him in silence.
“I’ve nothing to say to you.” His fury lashed out, stung him more than her. “I don’t have to justify anything to you, to anyone.”
When she said nothing, her silence only enraged him. He gripped her by the shirt, dragged her off the wall. “I did what I had to do. That’s all there is to it. I don’t need anything from you.”
He’d yet to wash off the blood—but then neither had she. His face was rough and shadowed beneath a couple days’ growth of scruff. And his eyes were shattered.
Instinct, she considered, versus intellect. She went with instinct. He shoved at her when she wrapped her arms around him, so she just held on. When it jarred her healing shoulder, she set her teeth, gripped tighter.
And instinct proved the right course when he went still, then dropped his head on the top of hers.
“I don’t want your sympathy.”
“You’re going to have to take i
t. And the respect that goes with it.”
“Respect, my ass.” He broke her hold, stepped back.
“I’ve got something to say, and you’re going to have to listen.”
“Not if I gag you.”
She planted her feet, lifted her chin. “Try it and you’ll bleed. She exploited your grief, she pulled you back to the moment when that grief was the sharpest, and she offered you a lie. The lie was changing what was, and it came from the image of someone you loved, you lost. She hooked you, Doyle, the way she did me in the woods, the way she went at Sasha in that first cave on Corfu, but not with violence, not for you. With cruelty.”
“I know what she did. I was there.”
“Don’t be a dick. Especially when I’m going to point out something essential you seem to be too pissed off to latch on to. You were stronger than she was. You did what you had to do, yeah, but you did it because you were stronger.”
“It wasn’t my brother,” he began, and she moved in, short-jabbed a fist to his chest.
“Bullshit. It looked like him, sounded like him, bleeding and dying in the same cave where you lost him. You had a choice, and don’t tell me, don’t fucking tell me, that for one fraction of an instant you didn’t wonder if you’d done what she wanted, you’d have had him back. You’d have broken the curse. Don’t tell me that in all the years you’ve lived the choice you made today wasn’t the hardest.”
“To save him, I’d have cut my own throat when cutting it would’ve mattered. Today? Even if it had been a real choice, even if it had been my brother, I wouldn’t have sacrificed you, or anyone in that house.”
“I know it.”
It mattered that she did, more than he could say.
“She separated me, and made me feel that distance so I could stand back, watch you fight, and think, what’s the point of it all? They’ll live, they’ll die, and I’ll just go on. That’s the difference.”
“Three nights a month I’m pretty different myself.”
“Not the same.”
“Oh, boo-hoo. I’ve got to live forever, feel my pain.” Deliberately dramatic, Riley clutched at her heart. “I’ve got to live forever, young and hot and strong, feel my torment. Get over yourself, old man.”
“You have no idea what—”
“Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Why don’t you take a rest from the I’m cursed for a century or so. You’ve got the time.”
“Christ, you’re a pain in the ass.”
“Want some there-theres, some cheek pats? Let me go get Sasha or Annika.”
She started to turn, smiled to herself when he grabbed her arm, swung her around. She met his furious look with a sneer, and enjoyed—very much—how he wiped the sneer off her face.
The way his mouth crushed down on hers, hard and hot. The way his hands pressed, molded, possessed.