Crash and Burn (1)

you have to remind yourself to breathe, princesa?

**I'm back. Ain't no rest for the wicked, I tell you. ❤️

ACT THREE

THE GHOST OF HIS LIPS on mine. Lingering over every inch of my skin. My cheeks, my forehead, my nose. Featherlight kisses all along my collarbone.

My fingers reached up to trace my bottom lip, still feeling the way his teeth had tugged on it viciously.

"I want you to feel me for days, princesa."

For days.

The words seemed to burn through my brain like a red hot brand. He wasn't coming back.

I blinked slowly, the glaze of red seeming to blur with unshed tears as everything snapped together. It made sense. He hadn't brought me here to fuck me in a bed. Soren Calloway wouldn't have had any qualms with fucking in an empty control room or on an abandoned subway track.

No, he'd brought me here to leave me.

And that hurt.

That feeling of being abandoned sunk into my bones with a mind numbing pain. There was nothing but the ache in my chest that told me he wasn't coming back. Not for days.

Maybe not at all.

I was alone.

And just like that, everything whipped around me in a whirlwind of sanguine pressure clamping down on my heart. That ache wasn't just an ache; it was a white-hot sting of betrayal.

A smear of red shadows and memories of him, slipping between the sheets and hissing in pleasure. Skin against skin. Hands tangled into hair. Besos.

Promises.

Lies.

Hours ago.

He'd lied to me. Hours ago. He was an expert at so many things, and I'd always known that lying was one of them, but I...I didn't realize how much it hurt.

I wasn't angry.

No, as my fingers splayed against the cool sheets, I wasn't angry. I was alone.

I couldn't be angry when I was just so tired.

I was tired of fighting people. I was tired of running from people. I was tired of chasing people.

The past few weeks with Soren had been a long, destructive chase. Chasing Seth, chasing him, chasing me. Chasing after something that I never was really sure I'd be able to get. Chasing a normal life, chasing a life that I had before this.

A life that I couldn't go back to. It wasn't me anymore.

Raine didn't exist anymore. That life didn't exist anymore. It was gone. And what the hell would Lacey do if she ever got freedom?

Break into the Met with Soren Calloway? Drive to Mexico with Soren Calloway? Go to the beach with Soren Calloway?

All those promises, those one days. Soren was in every single one of my plans for the future. If we ever got one. It scared me how much I couldn't picture a life after this without him.

It had been fuzzy before I'd met him, simply for the fact that I never knew if I'd ever make it out alive. Since I'd met him, it had gotten clearer, sharper. Soren had started painting pictures of a life together, the possibility of something that came after this. After all the killing, the running, the hiding, the chasing.

That threatened to destroy me. It lit a flame that wouldn't fucking burn out.

"Just you and me."