Salvaged Soul (The Ignited Series Book 3) (25 page)

He was still too strong for me. My arms rendered useless, I resorted to trying to kick him off of me. He thwarted that attempt by shifting his weight and wrapping his legs around mine until I couldn’t move them. I couldn’t move anything. He was just so much bigger and
stronger . . . and heavier . . . than me. By the time exhaustion forced me to give up trying to escape, our limbs were entwined and twisted together like a deformed jumbo pretzel.

“You’d really be in trouble if Lillian walked in right about now,” I smirked.

Nathan leaned down until his nose touched mine. “I. Do. Not. Care.” He emphasized each word with a bite that made me cringe inwardly.

But his words made me do what I shouldn’t have done. I met his eyes, and something deep down inside of me churned. I may have been furious with him, but I loved him. I always had. And, damn him, those eyes weakened me.

Nathan sagged a little in relief, but didn’t loosen his hold on me. The only thing that softened was his voice. “Can you let me explain?”

I blinked back the surge of fresh tears. “There’s nothing to explain. You kissed your ex-girlfriend.”

“She kissed me,” he corrected.

“It takes two people to kiss, Nathan,” I returned quickly. “You didn’t stop it.”

“Yes, I did.”

“I didn’t see you.”

“Because you left before—”

“It doesn’t matter if it only lasted for a second. She should have never gotten close enough to kiss you in the first place!”

His mouth was open, ready to plead his case, but he shut it without a word.

I had a point and he knew it. I looked up at him triumphantly, except I sure didn’t feel like I had won anything. He could have stopped it before it happened. He didn’t. What did that mean?

Suddenly, I was too sad to fight anymore.

Nathan noted the shift in my mood. He let go of my wrists and sat up, lifting some of his weight off of me. “You’re right,” he murmured. “I shouldn’t have let her get that close. I don’t know . . .” He trailed off with a shrug.

“You still care about her.”

“But not like that. Not like you think. Not anymore.”

“How can you be so sure?” I didn’t give him time to respond before I added, “Maybe you should spend some time with her to find out if there’s still anything there.”

His eyes widened at my suggestion.

Honestly, I couldn’t believe I had said it either. I regretted it for a second, but ultimately decided to stand my ground. “I think you need to figure out if you still have feelings for her.”

“Kris . . .”

“It’s the only way to know.”

Nathan cupped my face between his hands. “I don’t have to
test
anything.” He lowered his head, and I dodged a kiss—proving that it was possible to do so.

“Don’t,” I pleaded, shaking my head out of his grasp.

“I already know what I want.” He tilted my head to his and brushed his lips against mine.

I didn’t dodge him this time. I allowed myself a second of vulnerability, and opened myself to him as he slowly, cautiously penetrated my defenses.

My head spun from the minty taste of his kiss and I soared from the feel of his tongue tracing the curve of my bottom lip . . . and I came crashing down as I wondered if Lillian had felt the same way. With a strength I didn’t know I possessed, I pushed him away.

“No,” I grunted. “You can’t just kiss me, and think that makes everything okay. It doesn’t.”

Nathan sat up straight and threw his hands up in surrender. “Okay . . . fine.”

I stared into the space between us, unable to look directly at him, but unable to look away. I loved him so much . . . so much that the next words I had to say hurt too much to say. I swallowed, not sure I had the strength to mutter them.

“What do you want me to do, Kris?” Nathan’s voice nearly cracked, and I had to close my eyes from looking to see if he was hurting as much as me. He couldn’t, because no one could ever hurt as much as I hurt right now. “Huh? What do you want? I’ll do whatever you want me to do. I’ll go tell Lillian right now about us, if that’s what you want.”

It wouldn’t be enough. My throat constricted in preparation of my next words, almost as if my body protested my need to say them.

“Remember when you insisted I figure out my feelings for Alec?”

He swallowed, and I knew he had an idea of where I was going with this conversation. And he didn’t like it.

“I think you need to figure out how you feel about Lillian,” I finally said. “I need you to figure out if you still love her.”

“Kris, I love
you
.”

I shook my head. “Then you need to do this, before the not knowing ruins us.”

“Kris, I already know.”

I repeated the same words he told me months ago, in reference to my relationship with Alec. “You need to make sure.
I
need for you to make sure.”

His eyes narrowed fractionally. “What are you saying, Kris?”

I couldn’t say it. My mouth worked, but nothing came out. Only more tears. They slid down my face and disappeared under my chin.

Nathan was silent as he watched me, but the clenching of his jaw and flaring of his nostrils hinted at his growing anger. “That’s really what you want?” he asked. “The fact that I’m right here, telling
you
that
you’re
the one that I love isn’t enough?”

I took a deep breath to steady myself, but my voice still shook with the single word. “No.”

Nathan launched himself off of me, off the bed. I sat up, already regretting that word. I was torn. I didn’t want to lose Nathan, but I had to know if he had any lingering feelings for Lillian. I couldn’t—he shouldn’t expect me to— move on without both of us confident in our future together.

He was halfway to the door, when he stopped and turned. “We’re done? That’s what you want?”

No, not
done
. That wasn’t what I wanted, at all. Unless he was still in love with Lillian . . . “Just a break. That’s—”

“A break?”

I risked a peek at him, and immediately wished I hadn’t. He was mad. Furious. I had never seen him that mad . . . at me, and I hated that it had come to that. Why didn’t he understand? I didn’t want a break. I didn’t want any of this to happen, but it had, and now I needed to know with absolute certainty that he wanted to be with me.

“I need to know that you don’t have deeper feelings for Lillian before we can move past this,” I said softly.

He tilted his head to the ceiling with a shake. “Nothing even happened,” he groaned. “There’s nothing to move past.”

“I think there is.”

His eyes lowered to mine, and hardened. “Right. Because my words mean nothing to you.”

He moved to the door, and this time he didn’t stop. The sound of the door slamming shut behind him made me jump, and tore down the dam that was holding back a new wave of tears. I feared, as I crumbled to my bed, that they would never stop.

Chapter 25

{Nathan}

Two days crawled by, and I didn’t see Kris once.

She skipped combat class the first day, then as mission preparations heated up, Jared found me another replacement for the class. Whether or not she showed up the second day, I didn’t know. She wasn’t on the beach at her normal times. She dodged me at breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I honestly didn’t know if she ever came out of her room. I never saw her. Never heard from her.

And it was killing me. Her absence was slowly . . . agonizingly . . . ripping my heart to shreds.

I didn’t want this break—or break up?—or whatever it was. I knew, deep down, she didn’t either. But she needed reassurance. I understood that.
Now
.

At the time, I had been caught off guard, and reacted out of anger. Now I knew what I needed to do. If spending some time with Lillian was what Kris needed me to do, I would do it. If evaluating my feelings for Lillian was what she needed me to do, I would do it.

I already knew what the outcome would be, of course, but I would do it. I would do anything to put this break nonsense behind us.

Problem was, I hadn’t seen Lillian since the incident on the pier, and I suspected that she was avoiding me, too. Not that I blamed her after the way I had taken off like a madman. I doubted she had seen Kris, or knew the reason why I had run off. I had some explaining to do when I finally managed to corner her.

But finding Lillian came a distant second to the agony I had suffered the past two days. I still couldn’t believe how I had managed to muck everything up. I had done exactly what Micah said I would do.

“Little shit.”

I stared into my cup of orange juice as if I expected a resolution to materialize out of the pulp—like an easy-to-follow checklist to guide me in fixing everything. Once I realized how stupid I probably looked staring into a cup of orange juice, I chugged it down with one gulp.

“Need a little vodka to go with that shot of OJ?” Alec pulled out a chair and took a seat across from me at the otherwise empty table. When I looked up at him, he grimaced. “Man, you look like hell.”

I shrugged my shoulders. Who cared? Besides, I doubted I looked as bad as I felt.

Alec put both elbows on the table, cupped his chin in his hands, and looked at me. He didn’t say anything, just looked.

“What?” I asked.

He shook his head once. “Boy, are you an idiot.”

Apparently, Kris had come out of her room at some point. I shouldn’t have been surprised that she had gone to Alec, and I shouldn’t have had the urge to punch the wall because of it. They were friends. Sure, he was still in love with her, and she was probably still a little in love with him—even if she might never admit it—but I had made my peace with that.

Nevertheless, knowing that she had gone to him after I had screwed everything up kind of pissed me off.

I pushed away from the table. “I really don’t want to hear this from you right now.”

Alec jumped up and kept in pace with me to the door. “Well, you’re going to hear it anyway.”

My hands shot out to push the double doors open with a bang, drawing the attention of a few developing hybrids that were passing by. I ignored them, and Alec, and kept walking.

He didn’t take the hint, and unwisely grabbed me by the shoulder. I stopped and made a fist as I contemplated whether or not I wanted to hit him. He took advantage of my hesitation, and backed me up against the side of the building, out of view of curious eyes.

“I was partially joking the other day,” he jeered, “about how I didn’t envy you because you were surrounded by all these tempting women. Truth is: I did envy you, because there was one thing that I said that day that was true. You had the perfect girl. Key word:
had
.”

My fist unfurled and dropped to my side in defeat. Wow. That hurt. Honestly, I would have preferred for Alec to pop me in the jaw than to hear him say what he had said.

And he wasn’t done, either.

“You had the girl I loved so much, I let her go because she loved
you
. And what did you do with that?” Alec shook his head because, obviously, there just weren’t enough words to describe the amount of stupid he thought I was. He jabbed a finger it into my chest, hard. “You better fix it, and you better fix it soon because if I have to see her cry one more time, I’m going to come looking for you, and it won’t be pretty.”

He turned to leave, and I thought,
what the hell?
“What should I do?”

He slowly turned. His eyes were hard when they met mine. “Are you seriously asking?”

I nodded. “I’m seriously asking.”

Alec looked at the ground and inhaled deeply. When he looked up again, his eyes had thawed . . . some. “What happened?”

“She didn’t tell you?”

“Oh, she told me. I want to hear your version of the events.”

“Lillian kissed me,” I said simply. “I didn’t want it to happen, I didn’t mean for it to happen. Kris saw it, and now she thinks I might still have feelings for Lillian, and she wants me to . . . explore them, I guess.”

“You really didn’t want it to happen?” His tone caused me to meet and hold his gaze. He lifted his eyebrows as if to say,
bullshit
.

“I didn’t.”

He held my gaze as if studying me for signs of deceit. I knew he wouldn’t find any, and when he didn’t, he sighed and came to stand beside me. He propped one foot against the wall behind him, put his hands in his pockets, and sighed. “She’s pretty upset. I don’t know what to tell you.”

“You know what the funny part is?” Except it wasn’t funny at all. “She’s asking me to do the exact same thing I asked her to do . . . with you. It seems karma is coming back to bite me in the ass.”

“You asked her to do that? To explore her feelings for me?” I heard the grin in his voice.

“Yeah.”

“And you want to know what to do now to fix everything with her?”

“Yeah.”

“I say . . . do it. Explore the feelings that may, or may not, be there for Lillian.”

I tapped the back of my head against the wall with a sigh because, dammit, I knew he would say that.

“You probably don’t want to hear this,” Alec continued, “but she did it. Kris did what you asked her to do. We had some moments, some things for me to file away in my bank of memories. In the end, she determined she wanted you, but she did what you asked her to do. Maybe you need to do the same.”

I hated it when Alec was right. His words really sunk in, really hit home. All of them . . .

I rotated my head to look at him. “Exactly what kind of
moments
do you have filed away?”

Alec’s gaze slid to mine, and he grinned. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

“That was kind of the point of me asking.”

Alec shoved away from the wall, and turned to me as he backed up. “I didn’t give her up so that you could screw it up. So fix it.”

He left without waiting for a response . . . or answering me.

I decided that my first stop should be to see Lillian, to put into motion the events that needed to happen for me to do the soul searching Kris had requested. But Lillian wasn’t in her room.

Tracking her down was put on hold when an errand boy cornered me as I left the girls’ dormitory, and handed me a note from Jared.

Jeffries is growing impatient. Wants us to attack. Team is meeting at the docks at dusk tonight.

After I read the three lines, I crumbled the paper in my hand and tossed it into the nearest trashcan. “God dammit.”

Jeffries was an incompetent asshole. If I didn’t know any better, I would have sworn he was trying to get us killed. We didn’t know enough yet. The recon mission had barely scratched the surface of the Skotadi’s agenda. For all I knew, we were about to walk into a huge trap, handed over to the enemy on a platter, wrapped up in a pretty bow prepared by one of our own damn leaders.

Moron.

I turned back toward the girls’ dormitory. I had told myself that I wouldn’t approach Kris again until I had fixed the Lillian issue, but . . .

This mission pressed the issue a little bit. There were a few things she needed to understand if I went and got myself killed tonight, like the supervisors seemed intent on.

They didn’t seem to give a damn about the spies on the island . . . they had sent all of our best soldiers on numerous missions while the Skotadi strengthened their numbers in our back yard . . . they were forcing Jared’s and my hands in this hare-brained mission before we were ready, almost as if . . .

“Son of a bitch.” I came to a sudden stop ten yards from the entrance to the girls’ dormitory. “How did I not see it?”

I turned, and headed straight for Jared’s office in the administrative building.

Rodney stood at his usual post, but I didn’t pause to acknowledge him before I let myself into Jared’s office.

He didn’t look surprised to see me. “I assume you got my memo?”

“Yeah.” I waved my hand as if batting that subject away, because that wasn’t why I was there. “I have a question.”

I took up position against the wall with my arms folded across my chest. I stared at my arms for a moment before I spoke, because the pieces were still aligning for me . . . and I had no idea where this conversation was going to go yet.

“Does Jeffries have any connection with Geography?”

“And by connection, you mean . . .”

“Does he have a hand in it?”

“All the head supervisors work together in organizing our efforts. You know that.” Jared leaned back in his chair with a sigh. “Nathan, I’m afraid to ask where you’re going with this.”

“This immortality conspiracy goes as high as the
demigods
,” I said. “Who’s to say some of our own supervisors aren’t in on it? We know the Geography department has spies. What if there are others?”

Something flashed in Jared’s eyes and he sat back in his chair. He studied me silently as he chewed over my words. “You think Jeffries is a spy,” he concluded.

I nodded then added, “I think he’s trying to distract us.”

“From what?”

“Don’t you find it odd that we have Skotadi sniffing around in our own back yard, and he has shipped all of our best soldier off the island during the same week?”

“The Skotadi are going to attack the island,” he said, and I knew he believed it as much as I did. “But why?”

“For Kris. They’re coming for her.”

“So what do you want to do?” Jared asked.

I had no idea, but there was one thing I was absolutely sure of. “I’m not stepping one foot off this island tonight. Not without Kris.”

Of all the times for me to not be able to find Kris, it had to be
now
. I knew something was about to go down . . . I just didn’t know exactly what, or where, or when.

She wasn’t in her room. I knew that for certain because I climbed up the side of the building and snuck into her room to make sure she wasn’t avoiding me. The sliding glass door was unlocked, but she wasn’t there.

I went to her desk to grab a piece of paper to write her a note. I moved some junk out of the way to reveal an unopened envelope postmarked from Greece, addressed to her in my handwriting. I stared at it for a moment in confusion, then a goofy smile spread across my face when I realized what it was. The letter I had written her from the train before we raided the village.

It was unopened, which meant she hadn’t read it yet, but I could use that to my advantage. This letter contained the words that, at that time, I thought might have been my last words to her. And now was when she needed to know exactly what she meant to me, more than ever.

If she didn’t believe me when I told her, maybe she would believe me when she read my words.

I tore a piece of paper out of the journal, and wrote her a note, pleading with her to read the letter. I placed the note and the envelope in the middle of her bed, where I hoped she would see it.

Then I went back to my room to wait.