Page 39 of Truth Revealed

“You’re right,” he choked out. He lifted a hand and rubbed it down his face, tugging at his beard before it flopped back to the mattress. “Fuck, but you’re right.”

If her chin wasn’t propped on his chest, her mouth would’ve dropped open. Did Betrayal just agree with her?

“I am?”

His hot cocoa eyes turned down to hers and studied her for a long, agonizing moment. “For just a second, when I felt that blade press against my skin, and everything happened so fast when Misery and Death approached—I thought that was it. I was done for.” His voice was filled with a landslide of emotion. “And the thing that ran through my head was… good.”

Daria’s heart stopped beating.

“Good, because at least then I wouldn’t be around to fuck up again—to hurt you again, or the others.” He shook his head as if clearing it before continuing. If he noticed the ache he summoned in Daria’s chest, he didn’t show it. “And my next thought was, bullshit. That was a cop out, and I knew it. Dying before I got to resolve any of my own guilt… anything between us, was unacceptable.”

From the dark look in his gaze and the firm set to his jaw, he had more to say. Daria remained quiet even as her chest expanded with a much needed inhale.

“I fucked up, Daria,” he confessed. “In the beginning, with the jar. And then turning to Pandora instead of dealing with my fucked up-ness. I put all of you in danger. And I know I said it before, but I’m so, so fucking sorry. Truth of it is… I have a lot of things to work on. I can’t promise it’ll get better overnight, but I can promise to be more self-aware of when I need to talk about things. With you. With the others. With myself.” The raw emotion revealed in his gaze almost startled her.

“Daria, I don’t want to die without making things right between us.”

Her breath caught at his declaration, and she didn’t have words to respond. So instead, she leaned up and caught his lips with hers. His beard scraped against her cheeks, but the contrast with the softness of his lips was only made that much better by the rough sensation. His lips moved against hers, and more emotion passed between the two of them in that moment, spoken and unspoken, than it had since the time she’d seen him in that darkened club hallway.

Trailing her hands up his chest to frame his face, she held him still while she showed him with her lips what she couldn’t say.

She was there for him.

She cared for him.

They were in this together.

Long moments later, they broke away with swollen lips, wide eyes, and gasping breaths.

“I’ll make a deal with you,” she whispered, and leaned over to grab his coin off the nightstand. Balancing it between her thumb and pointer finger, she held it up to him. “I’ll work on forgiving myself, if you forgive yourself.”

His fingers were warm to the touch as he took the coin from her. His gaze bored into hers, searching for something, before he nodded. Then, he flipped the coin with a soft rasp of flesh against metal. End over end it flipped through the air, reflecting the light from the lamp on the nightstand. It landed with a dull smack in his palm.

But he answered without even glancing at the coin. “Deal.”

DARIA

The dark beckoned her again, calling her name so sweetly she wanted nothing but to follow it.

So she did.

The tiny light bounced and fluttered before her, like a beacon, and she followed it too, while the darkness seemed to grow blacker and blacker.

Maybe she should have been afraid, but she just couldn’t find it within herself. Instead, she felt an urgency. Daria had to reach the light. But every time she stretched her hand out and the warmth of it tickled her fingertips, it darted away.

A game of cat and mouse, she chased. Followed. Hunted. Pursued.

But it escaped her at every turn, if there even were turns. Hard to tell in the utter nothingness around her.

Suddenly, the light stopped. Grew bigger. Brighter. Blinding.

Raising a hand, she shielded her eyes, but it didn’t help. The light only pierced even the tiniest gap between her fingers.

Where she’d only seconds ago wanted the light, now she wanted to run from it. So she did.

But it didn’t work. Her legs kicked, propelling her forward, but it was as if the light was eating the space she created, gaining on her anyway.

She glanced back and only whiteness filled her vision, until—