Kelly Meding - Wrong Side of Dead

I blink, and a hot tear slides down my cheek. “You thought you’d lost me again. Once and for all.”

“Yeah.” The single word is broken, full of regret and sorrow.

“Guess it’s a good thing we broke up, huh?”

“No, Evy.” He tugs until I turn around, and I’m crushed beneath the emotion in his eyes. And confused. “No, I was furious with myself. I thought I’d wasted the last two weeks we could have had together, and I knew I’d always regret that.”

My head is too light, and I grab his forearms to stay firmly upright. He grips my elbows, holding tight. “What are you saying, Wyatt?”

“That no matter how much I’ve changed, one thing hasn’t and it’s that I still love you.”

I thought hearing those words would make me giddy with joy. Make me say them back, reassure Wyatt that I still love him. And I do. But all I feel is sad. Sad for him. Sad for Milo. Sad for the two huge secrets I’m still keeping from Wyatt and can’t bring myself to tell. Not just the secret of his past that I’m keeping for Rufus, but the secret of my time with Walter Thackery. The thing I asked him to do.

The fact that I embraced my inner Chalice and I gave up.

“I still love you, too, Wyatt, but that was never the problem,” I hear myself saying. “It’s everything else.”

He doesn’t patronize either of us by asking what else. He simply nods, thoughtful. “The odds are against us ever being happy, I know. So that means we don’t even try?”

“Relationships are hard, and they require trust, right? Both people have to trust each other.”

“You don’t trust me.” It isn’t posed as a question, and I want to shake him for it.

“No, you can’t trust me.”

He frowns, releases my arms, and steps backward several paces. The distance might as well be a mile. “What do you mean?”

I feel as though I’m standing on a cliff and the stones beneath my feet are crumbling. “That there are still some things I can’t tell you, and they’re not little things, and I know that by keeping them from you I’m being dishonest. And you deserve better than that, Wyatt.”

“I don’t give a fuck anymore what I deserve, Evy. I want you.”

“Are you sure?”

His face is a perfect illustration of what the fuck do you mean, am I sure?

“You don’t know me anymore, not even these last two months. The girl you fell in love with died. The goblins made sure she died in the worst possible way. I’m not her. I haven’t been her for a long time.”

“I know who you are.” His voice is firm, his expression stormy.

“I don’t even know who I am. How can you?”

“Because the parts that matter are still there, Evy. Your loyalty, your pride, your drive and willingness to fight for what you think is right. Your ability to out-cuss anyone I know.”

He isn’t getting this. “I let him go,” I say.

Wyatt’s eyebrow furrow. “Let who go?”

Shit. It isn’t what I intended when I opened my mouth, but there it is. In for a penny … “I let Felix go.”

“When?”

When? Seriously? “Today, Wyatt. I let him go today, in the fucking bus.”

Wyatt freezes completely, so still for so long that I’m sure he’s been replaced by a photograph. Then he shakes his head. “What do you mean?”

“I saw his eyes. I saw the color change. I knew he’d been infected and I knew what I needed to do.” My stomach is in knots over the split-second decision that I’m not even sure I consciously made. “Marcus was already outside. It was just me, Milo, and that asshole who got Milo shot. I didn’t … shit.”

Why is this so hard? I’ve owned up to my mistakes before, admitted them out loud to Wyatt. What about this hurts so much? That I don’t think of it as a mistake?

“What did he do, Evy?” Wyatt asks.

“He knocked me down, and he had the advantage. I was so shocked I couldn’t react. It was like looking at Jesse all over again.” Months ago I’d watched my former partner get bitten and turn into a Halfie in front of my eyes. Watched him murder our other partner, Ash, then look at her with a sick fascination born of passion and confusion. Disgust and bloodlust. And then I shot him in the heart.

“And then Felix smiled,” I continue. “Smiled like he’d just discovered the ultimate secret to joy and wanted to share. He looked at me, and even though I could see the madness, for one brief moment he was perfectly lucid. He was Felix. And do you know what he said to me?”

Wyatt shakes his head, eyes suspiciously bright.

“He said ‘it doesn’t hurt anymore, Evy.’ ” My voice breaks just as my heart broke earlier on the bus. “He wasn’t holding tight. I probably could have gotten my arms free, reached up, and snapped his neck. Kept him from an existence in half-Blood hell, but I didn’t.”

“You let him go.” His voice is so quiet. Not the quiet of calm or intimacy. No, this is furious-Wyatt’s quiet voice.

“Yeah.” More tears escape, tracking down my cheeks.

“You let a Halfie go.”

“I did. I let Felix go.”

“No, Evy.” Anger flushes his cheeks. His shoulders tremble faintly. “Felix was gone. You know that wasn’t him anymore. You let a Halfie go free, and not just any goddamned Halfie, but one with Hunter training and knowledge. One who knows where the Watchtower is and can use all of that against us.”

He’s livid. Angrier than I’ve seen him in a long time, and it’s my fault. Letting Felix go was wrong and stupid, and a decision made in only a few tense seconds. I can’t even defend myself, because there is no defense for my actions. I allowed emotion to control me, and I ignored my training.

Wyatt is not done spearing me with words. “Jesse was your partner for four years. He was infected right in front of you, and you still freed him. Alex was an innocent, and he was Chalice’s best friend. And you still put a bullet in the back of his head to free him. You’ve killed dozens and dozens of Halfies over the years, Evy. They don’t get a stay of execution, they get put down with extreme prejudice.”

“I know!” The two shouted words come out like vomit—unexpected and bitter. My throat hurts, my chest hurts, and I’m afraid I’ll turn inside out from all the emotion churning inside me. “I fucking know that, Wyatt!”

“Then why?” He’s finally shouting back, giving in to his temper. “Why Felix? You should fucking know better, Evy!”

I don’t want to keep fighting, but say it anyway. “Because he wasn’t in pain anymore. I know better than anyone what it’s like to spend hour after hour, day after day, in agony, just praying the pain will stop. But it doesn’t. It’s always there, even when you’re asleep. You can’t get away from it. The goblins tortured me, Thackery tortured me, and both times I’d have given anything for it to stop. Even if it was for just a few minutes. And all I had to look forward to was death.”

Wyatt’s eyebrows pull together as he puzzles something out. “You told me with Kelsa that you never stopped hoping for rescue.”

“I didn’t.” Fucking hell, I said too much. My cheeks are hot, my hands are cold, and I’m fairly positive I’m about to pass out. Or maybe spontaneously combust. “I didn’t give up with Kelsa.” I catch his stony gaze and try to hold it through a film of tears. “But I didn’t think I could survive that again and come back whole. I didn’t want to.”

He blinks hard, fighting his own tears. He knows. He won’t ask me to stop talking, but he knows what I’m about to say—the agony in his eyes tells me so.

“So,” I say, choking on the words, “I made Thackery promise to kill me when he was finished with me.”

All the anger he exuded before disappears, replaced by a kind of miserable grief mixed with disbelief. His eyebrows arch up, his mouth drops open. He’s so stricken it’s almost comical. But not really. Not at all.