Supernova

Chapter Seventy Six - Do You Ever Think About Leaving?

Demon was still being so, so nice to me. Carrying me everywhere. Kissing my forehead. Smiling at me. It was bliss. It was pure and utter bliss.

As long as I didn't think too much about how it was all Elias' sneaky behind the scenes handiwork making it all possible.

I couldn't stand Elias. After he suggested I follow him into the dark abyss of his Swedish home and grin and bear it while his mom fucking brainwashed me into submission, I could barely stomach the sight of him. There was not a single second I could look at him in the room we shared without thinking of just mercilessly murdering him.

However, I was a good liar.

I clutched to him and kissed him and nuzzled against the ever fading tingle of his skin's sensation and I started batting my eyelashes and pulling him into the shower and acting like there was no place I'd rather be in the world. I'd been signing us up for as many Deathmatch fights as I could, just for something to do. Some consolidation relief. We were already champions, sure, but I wanted to solidify my place at the top even further. Nobody had come close to dethroning me, and nobody ever would. The portrait of Cassie Stronghold would hang in the Deathmatch hallway of the SHA for all eternity, standing next to yet another egotistical maniac that had tried and failed to best her.

I hated Elias, I loved, loved, loved Demon, and I had been avoiding Needles. I didn't know if he was as good a liar as I was, or if he genuinely just didn't care, but the table had turned, and it was now him who was catching Demon and I in the bath, or cuddled up in bed together, whispering, or wishing him goodbye as we snuck of to some or other training gym. The more I found out about Elias, the more the guilt gnawed at me with every new lie about intending to keep my promise. You're still going to marry him, right? He'd ask me, every so often. Of course, I'd tell him. I promised, didn't I?

If you're disgusted with me, that makes two of us.

It had been nearly a year and a half since I'd gotten to the SHA, and I had no idea how I was going to make it three more years. Things were already too complicated, too messy, too vicious, too sad. I felt like screaming all the time. I felt like blowing my head off. I didn't even ask to go back to the lake because I knew I wouldn't be able to resist the temptation.

When mission time came around again, we were back in the section for four. I would take my victories where I could get them. At the very least, I'd take the change of scenery.

And Demon.

I'd take him as a reprieve any day. We were back to doing family camping trips with the retrievals sprinkled in sparsely, but it didn't mean that they two of us didn't find some excuse to run off, check the perimeter together, go get water or berries or firewood or whatever, and I didn't care how suspicious it looked. Those moments in which I had him all to myself were the only thing keeping me alive.

I wished they never had to end.

There was one mission slash camping trip where the Elias' darkness was nipping at me more than usual. Sharing a tent with him was hard. Pretending to kiss him like nothing was wrong was excruciating. Demon and I had wandered off at one point, supposedly gathering water from a nearby stream if I'm remembering correctly, but as usual, we'd gotten distracted and ended up lying in a field, watching the clouds through the clearing of the trees while our breathing and heartbeats returned to normal, our clothes discarded somewhere off to the side. I couldn't even really focus on the clouds because all I could think about was what it had looked like, what it had sounded like to have him kiss my cheeks, my forehead, my eyelids, my neck. We were both lying on our backs, but he had an arm around me, and even though I couldn't feel it, I knew it was there, and it was heaven. We were alone and spent and was almost certain we'd never been more connected to each other than in this moment.