"Doesn't care for anyone?" I repeated incredulously. Anger caused me to shove the gun out of my face so I could give her the full intensity of my glare. "Yeah, she didn't care so much that she went home after what you said and tried to kill herself. She cut her wrists open and almost bled out before someone found her. If she didn't care about anyone or anything, do you really think she would've taken your words to heart like that?"
The witch made a gurgling sound in the back of her throat as if she wasn't surprised to learn what Tristy had done, as if she felt no accountability or sympathy at all for Tristy's near-death.
"You almost killed her, you fucking bat!" I swiped out again like the wounded animal I was, hurt and cornered, fighting back for my life.
Instead of shooting me as she probably should've done in return, Madam LeFrey scurried a couple steps away until she was well out of my reach. At the same moment I realized her feet were bare, I also realized tears were matted to my cheeks.
A strange surge of surrealism passed over me, making my head light and woozy. A barefoot woman was about to kill me, and I was bawling like a baby. That was just so fucked up.
My vision blurred. I blinked as Madam LeFrey cocked her head to the side, studying me intently.
"You love this girl?" she asked.
I rested my cheek in the mud and fisted my hand around a clump of grass. The pain was beginning to make my stomach revolt and my thinking dull. But I tried to come up with an answer to her question because, hell, I don't know why. Maybe she'd put me out of my misery if I replied.
Did I love Tristy? God, no. Most of the time I didn't even like her. We'd survived through hell together, though, and you didn't just turn your back on a fellow hell survivor. They became a part of who you were and left you bound to always keeping watch over them.
"She's under my protection," I managed to answer, my words slurring for some strange reason. I had no clue if the pain was whacking me out, or if Madam LeFrey was pulling some voodoo crap on me, but I sure as fuck did not like being this vulnerable in front of her.
When ice-cold, gnarled fingers touched my pulse, I jerked under the pressure but couldn't seem to pull away. Turning my face, I opened my lashes and looked up at her. Pale, watery blue eyes held me captive as she peered straight inside me.
"Your friend doesn't care enough, no," she said. "But you . . . you care too much."
A hollow laugh escaped me. Here I was, ready and willing to die, and she was calling me caring. Yeah right, not giving a shit sounded real compassionate.
I had no clue what had happened to her gun, but it was nowhere in sight. If I had spotted it in that second, I might've grabbed it from her and pulled the trigger myself. But there was only me and her now. Her freaky pale blue orbs saw everything and more, making me shiver and wish she'd just put me down already.
"Please," I begged, my words slurring in the cold breeze.
"You've had a hard life but possess a pure soul," she said, ignoring me as I begged for death. "Hope drips from you like water in a leaky bucket. If it dries up, you'll turn hard and brittle. Like your friend." Her fingers shifted toward my eyes. I squeezed them shut right before she pressed both her thumbs into each of my sockets.
"What the fuck?" Was she going to pluck my eyeballs out? That sounded like it'd hurt. And I just wanted everything to stop hurting.
I grabbed her wrists to pull her off. "Let go." But as soon as my fingers latched around loose skin draped over frail bone, something happened and I couldn't move. My fingers locked into place around her, and I couldn't retreat, couldn't attack.
I was paralyzed.
"Don't worry." Her voice echoed between my ears as if she were speaking inside my head. "I'll give you your hope back."
That's when it happened. I have no idea how else to explain it except I was transported, sucked right out of my body on that cold wet ground with my ankle on fire and bleeding until suddenly, I was warm and dry, without a pain in the world and stretched out on a bed, buck-ass naked while the softest skin of the girl under me slid against mine.
Whoa! I was having sex with someone on silky sheets and a comfortable mattress. And fuck. Sex felt good after all. It wasn't as demented and perverted as that bastard who'd raped Tristy had made it look. It was sweet and warm, and just . . . really, really good. Better than good. Amazing.
Connected to my partner in the most unspeakable way, I buried myself deeper into her. Her sharp fingernails bit into my ass to keep me there. Desire rippled through my bloodstream as the sweetest, tightest wet heat hugged my dick. The link between us seemed to strengthen as her smell, her softness, her throaty sounds of pleasure attacked all my senses. I glanced down into her face, needing to see what she looked like.
She was beautiful, so beautiful. Probably in her early twenties, though I had a feeling I was too, and she had pale corn silk blonde hair that looked glossy and soft.
Dumbfounded by such pretty hair, I sank my fingers into it as I cupped her face in my palm. Grinning, she parted long, dark lashes to reveal the most amazing set of eyes I'd ever seen. Almost turquoise around the pupils, their color fanned out, turning stark blue and then a bright navy close to the rings of the irises. It didn't seem possible that eyes could change three shades of one color like that, but they did.
Her features were flawless, matching her unique eyes to perfection. With olive skin that wasn't pockmarked by blisters and sores as most of the methed-up girls in my neighborhood, she looked clean and wholesome. Pure.
"Tinker Bell," I said, my voice shocking me because it was deeper and more grown-up than I'd ever heard it before. I was no longer fourteen.
She smiled and breathed out a sigh, staring up at me as if she-
"I love you," she said, actually voicing the words I was aching to hear. It was the first time anyone had said that to me.
A shudder tore through me. Overwhelmed by a blasting warmth and a strangling, overwhelming desire to say it back, I pressed my forehead to hers and pumped my hips with an age-old rhythm that seemed as natural as breathing. Her wet warmth clamped even more snuggly around me and her spine arched up, smashing a set of full breasts against my chest as she gasped and threw her head back.
She was coming.
Most magnificent sight ever.
I had no idea how I knew what was happening to her, but I did, and the knowledge spurred my own body to respond. My balls tightened and my dick began to contract.
Before I could follow her into oblivion though, I was sucked away. Panicked, I clawed out to return to her, the perfect girl with the perfect body who said she loved me.
But then, there she was again. The bed under us disappeared and we were no longer naked. At least we were still twisted together-on a couch this time-and my chest still felt as weightless and free as it had in the last scene, as if I had nothing to worry about. I was . . . shit, I was happy.
So was she. Squirming underneath me, she tried to twist out of my grip as she laughed. I kept tickling her because I loved that sound, and I swear I loved her too. I had no idea how I knew that. I just knew. She was everything to me.
"Patrick Jason Ryan," she scolded me. "I'm warning you." But there was too much warmth and joy in her voice to be of any real threat.
She loved this as much as I did. My body responded, and I was ready for more of that sex I decided wasn't so bad after all.
But just as I leaned in to kiss her, a small voice asked, "Mama? Daddy? What're you guys doing?"
Startled the fucking shit out of me.
I wrenched my head around to find a little girl of four, five, hell, maybe six years old standing in the doorway, watching us curiously as she hugged a pink stuffed pig to her chest and sucked on her thumb. She was freaking adorable. Startling blue eyes, just like the woman on the couch with me, but darker hair.
Kind of like mine.
"Skylar." The woman gasped, unable to break free of me. "Help me, baby. Tickle Daddy. Get him!"
Daddy?
My eyes widened, but the wider I tried to make them, the less I saw. With a bright flash of white, I was jerked away from both girls.
The woman returned, thank God. She had coiled her pale hair up into formal silky rolls with white pearls woven through the locks and a veil trailing down her back. I sucked in a breath as I saw the wedding dress she wore.
Surrounding us, hundreds of people became a distant muted blur as they milled around the large reception hall just as the deejay started a new song. Our song.
"And this one's for the happy couple." The deejay sent me a nod, telling me I was up.
Ignoring how stiff the shoulder pads in my tux jacket were, I held out a hand to the blonde in the wedding dress. "Mrs. Ryan," I said, feeling as if everything inside me was going to burst out through my pores. "May I have this dance?"