Dead Lines

31: Soon

Unedited. 

Chapter Thirty-One

Chris remained standing there, shock and hurt chasing themselves across his face in a sadistic game of tag.

“Hurts, doesn’t it?” I asked. “When someone you love and trust betrays you like that.”

He blinked and a solitary tear dripped down his face. Slowly, his eyes drifted over to me and the emotions he was feeling blared out like a spotlight in the darkness. They burned with intensity and the firelight reflected off the glossy surface. I almost looked away, unable to take the pain, but I remained steadfast.

“I don’t—” he stopped and swallowed, unsure if he wanted to voice what he was feeling.

“Understand?” I completed for him. “We all play a part in this, Chris. Even you.”

“I played the fool. The puppet whose strings were pulled by misguided love.”

“We’re all fools in love. Not just you.”

He stared me down, testing my truthfulness in all of this. “What do you want from me?”

“Who says I want anything? We were friends once. Before you kidnapped Allie and then murdered me. We were friends.”

“For that alone, you should wish nothing but misery for me.”

“What I wish for you—” I paused, glancing over his face for some hint that the boy I once knew was in there somewhere. “I understand why you did it. I just don’t know how you could. I never did anything to you.”

He wiped the drying salt water off his face and took his eyes off me. “You don’t understand.”

“I do.”

“Then how can you not know? If Cyrus asked you—”

“I would never kill for him, Chris. Ever. That’s not what love is.”

“Would you kill to protect him?”

“What were you protecting her from? Tell me that. She was never in any danger. Not until she put herself there.”

“I was protecting her from Hades. She was suffering—”

The need to defend Hades roared to life inside me and made my hands clench into fists. “She did that to herself and she wasn’t the only one suffering.”

“Of course you would say that, stand by him.”

“They tortured each other. It wasn’t as one sided as you seem to think.”

“How could I have known any different? I took Persephone at her word and what I remembered—”

“You could’ve asked! You have a conscious, Chris! Jesus!” I got up from the crate I’d been perched on. “We’ve known each other half of our lives—”

“Not as long as I’ve known her.”

“You haven’t known her that long! Not you in this incarnation. You were blinded by love and past memories. You fell into the same trap as your past lives did; sacrificing your friends, your family, your life! All for a Goddess who couldn’t even be bothered to do the same for you. She chose freedom, not you. Do not preach to me about love and what I would do for it. You don’t know what love is, only blind obsession.”

I turned away from him and headed for the exit. Even though I couldn’t die, I could feel pain and at this point, I was willing to literally walk through fire, and whatever injury it caused, to get out of here.