Read Online Phoenix Rising by Heather R. Blair - Free Book Online Page A

thousand times.
    If she cared for him, if she truly had any feelings for him, why not admit the subterfuge and take her chances? Wasn’t he worth that?
    Instead her organization had contacted him first, sending him documentation, pictures of her first three months of reports, on him. Neat clean dissections of his every move; photocopies of private papers in his home, about his businesses and the hospital that was his pride and joy. Locations of the safe houses.
    He'd sat there, frozen to his chair, every word slicing into his heart. Forcing himself to read until the very last page, his hands shaking, the slick glossies burning his fingertips.
    In the end, one envelope remained. It had been addressed to him personally in a long spiky script. Only a single short line on the crisp note inside, written in that same spidery hand.
    Were you truly fool enough to love her, my Lord?
     
    Kelsey heard him repeat his last words again in that flat, utterly emotionless voice.
    “ I didn’t want to hear it . To listen to your excuses. No amount of words…or penance is going to erase what you did, Kelsey.”
    She blinked back the hot burn of tears. She'd no idea he saw her quite that clearly. “Then what will?”
    “Nothing.” His voice was so final her heart caught.
    Kelsey hadn’t realized until that second that she'd still had hope.
    “Okay then.” She skittered back from him in a half-blind haze, bumping into the glass wall and almost falling over again. Miles started to reach for her, but she saw him catch himself at her warning look. “Just so we are clear.”
    “There is nothing you can give me that will change what you did, Kelsey. Not even acceptance of that part of me that terrifies you.”
    “Because you wanted to make me beg…. Or you wanted to take it by force? Really? Is that it? To play the monster with me?” She leaned back, wrapping her arms around her shivering body.
    He stepped back from her slowly. “What if I did? Would that shock you? Maybe that is the closure I need, Kelsey. The monster is a part of me, not an act. Not playing .” He spat out the last word as if it offended him. “You just never saw it up close this way before. I shielded you from that because I felt your fear. Did you ever consider what I really am?”
    Kelsey looked at him levelly even as she shook, her eyes bright with the tears she refused to let fall.
    “No, I didn’t and I don’t consider it , Miles. My fear of being bit was mine , it wasn’t about you, for god’s sake! Because you aren’t a monster, not in any way that really counts…and no one can make me believe different, not even you! I was the monster in the end, and even though I tried to take it back, it was too late. Always too fucking late no matter what I do.”
    Kelsey reached behind her at those last words, choking them out as she fumbled desperately for the security panel. Before she lost it completely.
    “Just go, Miles. Leave. Please. ” Her voice broke finally and her eyes closed.
    He said nothing for a long moment. She hoped he'd gone, vanished into that night with a vamp’s preternatural power, leaving her alone. Alone so her heart could finish breaking. Again .
    The breeze stroked her tears with cool fingers and everything was silent.
    His voice breathed from the night.
    “I cannot.”
    “Oh god,” She turned her back to him, not wanting him to see the flood of tears she could no longer hold back. “Why the hell not? You did it before, how hard can it be?”
    Kelsey knew that was hardly fair, but she didn’t care.
    She had always known he would never forgive her, always. But hope was a stupid, stubborn, optimistic bitch that fought hard. Kelsey pressed her forehead into the cooling glass, willing him away as she keyed in the security numbers.
    Instead, she felt his hand on her back, as his other hand reached above her for the door.
    “Miles, goddamnit! I …. I don’t want you to see me cry.”
    Abruptly, Miles yanked her around to face him.