Page 225 of The Devil We Crave
I peer into the darkness across the street as a figure emerges from the shadows.
It’s not a sniper.
It’s an unarmed girl.
Her dark hair whips across her face in the wind, and the dark blue dress she’s wearing, which makes me think she’s just come from a business dinner of some kind, flutters madly around her knees.
A delicate hand comes up, furtively pushing her windswept hair out of her face, and I frown when I realize what I thought was too much makeup is actually her mascara running down her face.
She’s crying.
My guard lowers, but I stay in the shadows, watching her.
She takes an unsteady breath, obviously still sobbing as she wraps her arms around her body and crumples.
There's a tug inside me.
She moves closer to the edge of the roof, still hugging herself as she looks over it, down to the street below.
Suddenly, she climbs up onto the ledge.
What the fuck.
She stands tall—well, as tall as she’s able. She looks pretty short. But she standsproudly, and for one brief moment when her shoulders are back and her face is raised to the sky, I have a much better view of her.
Fuck me sideways.
What the fuck is Yelena De Luca doing up here?
Another shudder wrenches her body. A sob I see but can’t hear makes her shoulders collapse as she drops her hands and looks down at the street again.
She kicks off her shoes.
Oh, fuck.
She’s going to jump.
I lurch from the shadows of the rose bushes.Justbefore I’m forced to figure out what the fuck you yell at someone who’s about to leap off a forty-story building, Yelenascreams.
It’s not a scream of pain or fear. It’s primal, and violent, andangry. It’s fury and rage, coming from a subhuman part of her that rattles me to my core. It’s a battle cry that rips the fucking world apart as her hands ball to fists, her head throws back, and her voiceroarsover the din of the city.
“FUCK! YOU!!”she bellows. I can hear her so clearly that she might as well be standing five feet away, not across a busy Manhattan street.
Her body is tense, her hair whipping in the wind. But she doesn’t look broken anymore, and the mascara doesn’t look like black tears now.
It looks like fucking warpaint.
“FUCK YOU, MOTHERFUCKER!!!” She roars out another blood-curdling, bone-chilling scream. “I’M A MOTHERFUCKING WOLF AND YOU WILL NEVER FUCKING BREAK ME!! EVER!”
I don’t really know why it hits me so hard. Maybe it’s that I’ve never seen someone act soprimallybefore. Maybe it’s the juxtaposition of this small, beautiful girl roaring like the fucking devil.
Maybe it's the dramatics of the wind, and the night, and the neon of the city underneath us paired with that soul-flaying scream of defiance and rage and fury.
Then I realize why this moment’s hit me so viscerally.
This is what it looks like when a mask comes off.
This is what not pretending anymore sounds like.
