Read Online Restrain (Siren Book 3) by Katie de Long - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Katie de Long
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The one to kill me, or the one to fight at my side?
“You know what scares me, Mil?”
I shake my head, grateful for the change in topic.
“Thinking that even when we do put this shit to an end, it's not like things can go back to the way they were. I don't even know if I want that, half the time. A funeral for George, questions from police, the press, reorganizing things to compensate for everyone we've lost, and everything that's happened... On some level, it seems like this monster's already won. Like, even if we survive, he still managed to kill us.”
I keep quiet, afraid anything I say might give me away.
“The one thing I'm clinging to, the one thing that pushes me forward, is the idea that we can gain something from this, too. Something beautiful and unique enough to make up for everything else.”
My lips start trembling, sensing where he's going.
“You, Allen, even when we do move on from this, you're still gonna be my family. I promise you that. I promise you that we're gonna be free together. If I have to kill to make that happen, I swear it.”
That dichotomy again. I sigh heavily.
“You don't have to believe me, you don't have to reciprocate. But I want you to know it, clear to your core.” He takes my hand, and presses it into his bare chest. “My heartbeats have a purpose, and I will never forget that.”
He kisses me gently, tenderly, as though I'm the one cut up and bedridden, and my heart breaks. The tears become real, and as he kisses them away, too, I can't bear to think about what this'll mean in the morning.
* * *
The empty bottles pile up in the cooler, only two of them held in reserve for the possibility of future injuries. Calder's skin hums pleasantly against mine, his voice vibrating through me long into the night, as he tells me about his childhood, his family, the favorite restaurants he wants to take me to. My heart aches for him as he discusses his mom's struggles with, and death from bulimia, and the miscarried almost-children who haunted her, whose spirits she could never fully purge from her own.
He tells me about the career he wanted as a kid—Indiana Jones—and his embarrassment when he learned it wasn't a job title, only a character. He pulls my fingers to every scar on his body, from the one that he got when he fell out of a tree onto a wrought-iron fence and punctured a lung, to the one on the side of his neck from when George, as a child, tried shoving him down the stairs, trying to get baby Calder to come downstairs and play with him.
Unsure how to respond, I show him mine. The chicken pox scar on my forehead that my dad always joked looked like a bullseye. It was the one scar the disease gave me, and I only got it because of all the sores, I refused to leave that one alone. My mom snapped at me and swore that it would scar. I asked her how long the scar would stay, and she threw out a random number—a hundred fifty years. And when it did scar, somehow I believed I would outlive that expanse of time to see my forehead unblemished. Calder laughs with me at my imagined immortality.
The white line along my hairline where I rammed my head onto a car door as a kid. The one on my hand, from when Harry was teaching me to use a nail gun, and I was too busy flirting with a neighbor boy to look where I had the board braced.
The one at my temple, where a piece of lumber someone else dropped at work nearly cost me the sight in one eye.
The one I got at school, when I was twelve, from a fifteen year old's ring when he punched me. It was the only blow he got in. I don't tell Calder the real context of that one. The boy called my mom a whore—a charge I couldn't argue with—and punched back when I slapped him for it. I went into a blackout rage and beat him unconscious, nearly getting myself expelled from school. I still don't quite know all of the behind-the-scenes talks with my mom that persuaded the
“You know what scares me, Mil?”
I shake my head, grateful for the change in topic.
“Thinking that even when we do put this shit to an end, it's not like things can go back to the way they were. I don't even know if I want that, half the time. A funeral for George, questions from police, the press, reorganizing things to compensate for everyone we've lost, and everything that's happened... On some level, it seems like this monster's already won. Like, even if we survive, he still managed to kill us.”
I keep quiet, afraid anything I say might give me away.
“The one thing I'm clinging to, the one thing that pushes me forward, is the idea that we can gain something from this, too. Something beautiful and unique enough to make up for everything else.”
My lips start trembling, sensing where he's going.
“You, Allen, even when we do move on from this, you're still gonna be my family. I promise you that. I promise you that we're gonna be free together. If I have to kill to make that happen, I swear it.”
That dichotomy again. I sigh heavily.
“You don't have to believe me, you don't have to reciprocate. But I want you to know it, clear to your core.” He takes my hand, and presses it into his bare chest. “My heartbeats have a purpose, and I will never forget that.”
He kisses me gently, tenderly, as though I'm the one cut up and bedridden, and my heart breaks. The tears become real, and as he kisses them away, too, I can't bear to think about what this'll mean in the morning.
* * *
The empty bottles pile up in the cooler, only two of them held in reserve for the possibility of future injuries. Calder's skin hums pleasantly against mine, his voice vibrating through me long into the night, as he tells me about his childhood, his family, the favorite restaurants he wants to take me to. My heart aches for him as he discusses his mom's struggles with, and death from bulimia, and the miscarried almost-children who haunted her, whose spirits she could never fully purge from her own.
He tells me about the career he wanted as a kid—Indiana Jones—and his embarrassment when he learned it wasn't a job title, only a character. He pulls my fingers to every scar on his body, from the one that he got when he fell out of a tree onto a wrought-iron fence and punctured a lung, to the one on the side of his neck from when George, as a child, tried shoving him down the stairs, trying to get baby Calder to come downstairs and play with him.
Unsure how to respond, I show him mine. The chicken pox scar on my forehead that my dad always joked looked like a bullseye. It was the one scar the disease gave me, and I only got it because of all the sores, I refused to leave that one alone. My mom snapped at me and swore that it would scar. I asked her how long the scar would stay, and she threw out a random number—a hundred fifty years. And when it did scar, somehow I believed I would outlive that expanse of time to see my forehead unblemished. Calder laughs with me at my imagined immortality.
The white line along my hairline where I rammed my head onto a car door as a kid. The one on my hand, from when Harry was teaching me to use a nail gun, and I was too busy flirting with a neighbor boy to look where I had the board braced.
The one at my temple, where a piece of lumber someone else dropped at work nearly cost me the sight in one eye.
The one I got at school, when I was twelve, from a fifteen year old's ring when he punched me. It was the only blow he got in. I don't tell Calder the real context of that one. The boy called my mom a whore—a charge I couldn't argue with—and punched back when I slapped him for it. I went into a blackout rage and beat him unconscious, nearly getting myself expelled from school. I still don't quite know all of the behind-the-scenes talks with my mom that persuaded the
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