Page 50 of The Devil Takes

A leap I couldn’t—wouldn’t make.

And when it was clear there was no other choice left, I closed my eyes and searched for the string that tied us. It burst with light, bright as a summer day, the bond well fed, our tether glorious. I hesitated. Its warmth filled my chest with pleasure. But the hesitation lasted for only a moment. Long enough I could imagine a life where I could keep him. A world where the living could commune with the dead, the line between us nonexistent. But that was just a fantasy, and though I was a god—a selfish one—I knew I couldn’t take this from him.

The things that made his heart beat.

I couldn’t take away his sun.

By not choosing me, he’d made his choice.

So I severed the tie between us, watching as it frayed and frayed, fragments breaking off and floating away like spiderwebs. When it was done, I felt emptier than I ever had before. Only darkness remained and when I opened my eyes, Percy was gone, the indent in the mattress beside me the only indication he’d ever been there at all.

Ah.

Regret.

An emotion I’d hoped I’d never feel again, but here we were.

I closed my eyes and slept.

Haden was gone.

I knew it the moment I woke up alone in the darkness. Before that moment, I hadn’t realized he’d been with me at all—that his presence had crept under the surface of my skin. It had been a balm over the itchiness that ached through my body, soothing some of the exhaustion and pain that had consistently plagued me for months. Without him there I was left reeling, the sickness that had built inside me welling up like it meant to drown me.

Deeper and deeper I sank.

The more helpless I felt, the darker the water became.

Brett slept peacefully in his bed beside mine, and when I looked at his face, I nearly didn’t recognize him. His words from just hours ago seemed a world away, though they hitched a ride in my heart beside all the other injustices I’d swallowed over the years.

I was stupid.

A stupid omega.

Stupid enough I hadn’t seen what was right under my nose all along.

And now I was alone.

As time passed, the sickness only grew worse. Days turned to weeks, into months. The brisk autumn turned cruel as the first lick of winter crept up on the sleeping town of Madison. During those bitter months, I spent as much time as I could away from my roommates, terrified of what would happen should my guard drop, should the sickness consume me entirely.

Living with demons should’ve been familiar.

But the sickness only made everything worse.

Still, I reasoned it away.

Figured it had something to do with the loss of Haden in my life. The hole he’d left behind, figment of my imagination or not, was gaping and raw. It seeped into everything I did, the memory of his quiet embrace, of the way he’d made me feel more like myself than I ever had before.

Without him, I felt like a shadow.

I’d always felt that way, so it shouldn’t have hurt as much as it did to become invisible again. But I knew what it felt like to let go of my inhibitions. To be who I could’ve been instead of who I was raised to be.

I should’ve admitted to Tommy what had happened. Should’ve told him about Brett. Told him about Haden. I should’ve done a lot of things. Instead, I drank a shit-ton more caffeine, pounded through my last classes of the semester, and ignored the gaping black hole in my chest that threatened to swallow me whole.

I started losing time.

A few minutes.

An hour.