Blood Bound (24 page)

I forced a grin. “Yeah, but it makes an impressive gesture, right?” But she didn’t even crack a smile. “Olivia, I
will
break this binding. I swear. I’ll find the original contract and destroy it, even if I have to burn down an entire building in the process.”

“Cam, it won’t work….” she insisted, warily backing toward the door. “And even if it did, it could take you months just to
find
your contract, and even if you were able to destroy it, Tower would never let you live. You know that.”

I shook my head. “You’re getting tangled up in the details, and I don’t give a damn about the details. We’ll make it work. I’ll take a new oath, like you took as a kid. Right now. Write something and I’ll sign it. Write whatever you want—write that I’ll never leave your side again—and I’ll call a Binder right now so we can make it official.”

“It’s not that simple.” She shook her head, but her eyes were shiny and red with unshed tears. “It won’t work, Cam. It can’t.”

“Yes, it can. But I can’t make it work on my own. If you really want to leave, then leave. But don’t go just because you’re scared, of Tower, or anything else.
Cedo nulli,
Olivia. If you yield to no man, why should you yield to fear?”

“I’m not yielding to fear and I’m not running away. I’m facing facts. We don’t have any choice about this.”

“I have choices,” I insisted, refusing to break eye contact. “We both do. I may have to make mine carefully, and make a few compromises along the way, but I have a choice. I choose you.”

Fifteen

L
iv wiped tears from her face with the back of one arm and retreated until her leg hit the arm of the couch. “I can’t do this.”

“Then you’re a coward.” It took effort for me to unclench my jaw and loosen my fists. “I’m willing to risk my life to break my contract with Tower and you can’t even risk your pride to tell me it won’t be for nothing.”

“This has nothing to do with pride.” Her blue eyes blazed, and I could practically see her temper flare. “And yes, I’m afraid, but that fear isn’t just for me.” She had one hand on the doorknob, but made no move to turn it. “I’m leaving to protect us both, and that’s the same now as it was six years ago. I left then because I had to.”

“You had to,” I repeated, and she nodded, holding my gaze. “You
had
to get up and leave in the middle of the party? You
had
to go right home, pack everything you could fit into two suitcases and drive straight to the city?”

She hadn’t just left me. Hell, she hadn’t even just left the party. She’d left the whole damn town. Her parents didn’t know why. Anne didn’t know why. If Kori or Elle knew, they wouldn’t say.

Liv nodded, looking miserable, but her regret now was nothing compared to what she’d put me through. It couldn’t be.

“Why?” I shouted, fed up with the lies, and the silence, and the secrets. I could feel the end of my patience flapping in the ind, like the last bit of kite string about to slide through my fingers, and no matter how I clutched at it, I couldn’t quite catch it. “Why did you run, Olivia?”

I saw the secret crack inside her, like a dam under too much pressure, and the truth came gushing out in a painful jet of words she seemed to regret before the last syllable even fell from her tongue. “Because you would’ve killed me!” she shouted. “Or I would have killed you. If we’d stayed together one of us would have killed the other. I left to stop that from happening, and if I stay now—if I stay with you—it
will
happen, and I can’t live with that, no matter which way it unfolds.”

She sagged against my front door, as if there was nothing left to hold her up, now that her secret had leaked out, and I could only stare at her.

“What the hell are you talking about?” I felt as if I’d just stepped into bright sunlight and couldn’t bring anything into focus, least of all Liv. “I would never hurt you, and I can’t believe you’d ever intentionally hurt me.” Physically, anyway.

“Six years ago, I couldn’t have imagined myself killing anyone. But things change. I
have
killed, when I had to, and dealing with that wasn’t as hard as I expected it to be. As I
wanted
it to be.” Liv watched me through haunted eyes, and I realized that it wasn’t me she was scared of. It was herself. “We don’t know who we’re going to be in another six years, Cam. Hell,
I
don’t know who I’m going to be in another six
months.
I don’t know anything about the future except that if we stay together, one of us
will
kill the other. Elle told me, that night. At the party.” Liv exhaled, long and deep. “She said that if we stay together, one of us will kill the other.”

“Kill, like accidently hit with a car, or serve something with food allergens?” I said, still trying to understand what made no sense.

“No. Kill, like homicide. Murder-most-foul. She was very clear on that point. The only way to prevent it is to stay apart. So I tried. I’ve been trying for six years, Cam.” She sank onto the arm of the couch, still near the door, but no longer determined to leave. I’d asked for the truth, so she was going to give it to me.

“You followed me to the city, and I could have run again, or maybe I could have made you leave, but I didn’t want to. I thought that this way, I could still see you sometimes, and I’d know you were okay, even if you thought I hated you.” She shrugged, arms spread to include our current disaster. “You can see how well that worked.”

I settled onto the edge of the coffee table, staring straight into her eyes, hoping she understood how crazy the whole thing sounded. “Liv, I’m not going to kill you.”

“I know. But that only makes it worse. If you’re not going to kill me, that means I’m going kill you, and I’d rather die first. I don’t want to kill you.”

“Oh, come on.” I grinned, trying to lighten the mood. “I bet
sometimes
you want to kill me…”

“This isn’t funny!” She stood and started pacing angrily.

“Okay, calm down.” I grabbed her hand and she let me hold it for a second before pulling away. “Just because Elle saw something years ago doesn’t mean it’s necessarily going to happen. Or that it’ll happen exactly like she saw…whatever she saw.”

“She’s never been wrong.”

“How do you know that? Have you personally verified every prediction she’s ever made? Hell, you haven’t even seen her in six years, right?”

“She’s dead, Cam. I tried to track her. I’ve tried over and over, and I get nothing. If she were just out of my range, I’d at least get some faint hum of life, but I get nothing. She’s dead, and she’s been dead for years, and as far as I know, what she told me that night was the last prediction she ever made.”

I blinked, stunned. I’d only met Elle once and hadn’t thought about her in years, but hearing that she’d died—after making a prediction about my own possible demise—left this strange numb spot in my chest. “Are you sure? I could try name-tracking her.”

Liv shrugged. “Go for it. I hope you find something. But I’m not holding my breath. If she’s still alive, she’s been connected at the hip to a world-class Jammer for the past six years, and that’s just not possible.”

“Anything’s possible with enough money and the right connections.” I thought we’d established that. “Most Skilled celebrities keep a Jammer on staff 24/7, to prevent them from being tracked by Skilled paparazzi, and the president probably has a whole
team
of them.”

“Right, but Elle doesn’t have any money, and if she had connections, she hid them pretty damn well.” Liv scrubbed her face with both hands again, then pushed her hair back and met my gaze. She looked exhausted, and not just from the very long day we’d both had; Liv looked as if she hadn’t slept well in a year. “Elle’s dead, Cam. And she was right about us. She wouldn’t have said anything about it if she weren’t one-hundred-percent sure. That was kind of her policy.”

That ache in my chest spread until my heart felt like a vacuum, desperately sucking at everything in a vain attempt to fill the void. To feel something that wasn’t pain and shock. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I was afraid you wouldn’t believe me and if I gave you a chance, you’d talk me out of leaving. Then one of us would die. I was trying to protect you.”

“You were trying to
protect
me? By not telling me about the most horrible thing my future is rumored to entail? How the hell is that protecting me?” I demanded, and my pain sounded a little too much like anger. Felt a little like it, too.

“This is hell, Cam,” Liv said through clenched teeth, as if she was trying to physically hold back more tears. “I think about it all the time. I hide it. I run from it. But every time I close my eyes…every time I let my mind relax—there it is. One of us is going to kill the other. Not in a wreck or an overly enthusiastic hug. Murder. I dream about it—nightmare after nightmare. I look for it over my shoulder. I try to imagine what could possibly turn us against each other, and in my head, the scenarios leading up to murder are almost worse than the outcome itself. I didn’t want you to have to go through that, too. I thought it’d be easier for you if you didn’t know.”

She was serious. I could see it in the tears still standing in her eyes. In the closed-off, self-defensive way she crossed her arms over her chest, as if she was hugging herself.

“So you carried that all by yourself?” I didn’t understand her willingness to suffer in silence—to suffer
alone
—but I knew what it meant. How hard it must have been. “How long did you think that could go on?”

She shrugged miserably. “I was half hoping you’d find someone else and forget about me. Then I could leave without worrying that you’d follow me, and we’d both live.”

“With other people.” Why did just saying it out loud sound like a death sentence? I swallowed thickly and made myself meet her gaze. Promising myself I’d accept the truth of whatever she had to say. “Is that still what you want?”

“Cam, that was
never
what I wanted,” she said, and my relief was like a pardon from the governor. “It’s what I thought we both needed.” She glanced at the floor, then took a deep breath and looked right into my eyes. “But seeing you—touching you after so long—makes leaving again
so
much harder. The thought of walking through this door hurts worse than any resistance pain I’ve ever felt. Like I’m resisting a compulsion from my heart.” Her tears finally fell, and my chest ached fiercely. “I understand something now that I couldn’t come to terms with before.”

“What?” My question was more breath than voice.

She wiped her face with both palms, then looked straight into my eyes. “I realized that I’d rather die with you than live with someone else.”

I don’t remember crossing the room, but the next thing I knew, she was in my arms, so real, and solid, and just like I remembered. I couldn’t resist anymore. So I kissed her.

Sixteen

I
shouldn’t have said it. I meant every word of it, but I shouldn’t have said it, because it wouldn’t work out. It couldn’t. Just because I was willing to risk my life to be with him didn’t mean he should be willing to risk his.

Then he was kissing me, and everything else just kind of melted away. It was as if I’d never left. As if I’d never lost him, or my friends and family. As if I’d never worked as a Tracker, or been stabbed on the job. As if I’d never even
met
Ruben Cavazos and lost a good chunk of my free will.

But it wasn’t real. We were both six years older, and about a century wiser and more jaded. The world had kept turning in my absence and slung us onto opposite poles, though Cam didn’t know it yet.

What we wanted didn’t matter. What mattered was what we’d sworn. What we couldn’t undo.

“Wait.” I pulled back, but couldn’t quite make myself step out of his arms. They felt too good. Too familiar. Cam stared down at me expectantly, and I forced out more words I didn’t want to say. “I just…I need to know that you understand what you’re getting into.”

He grinned, and his hand slid over my hip. “I think I remember how this part works….” He leaned down for another kiss, but when his lips trailed down my neck, I stepped back reluctantly.

“I want this as badly as you do,” I insisted, but he shook his head, reaching for me again.

“That’s not possible….”

“But we’re making a choice here,” I continued. “And I need to know that you understand that. We’re choosing a short life together, rather than potentially long lives apart.” I was weak. He felt too good. And at the moment, theoretical death seemed too distant and vague a concept to worry about. But death
would
come, and I didn’t want either of us to regret our decision when the end came.

“Olivia, I’m not going to kill you. Okay?” he demanded softly, and I could only nod. “And you’re not going to kill me. There isn’t a single doubt in my mind about that. Why would you go to all this trouble to keep us safe, only to turn around and kill me down the road? Our future is whatever we make of it, and that’s nothing to be afraid of.”

I wanted to believe him. I wanted to silence that cynical voice in my head and embrace the cheesy optimism Cam had always been prone to spout when he got emotional. But he didn’t know about the mark on my thigh, and he didn’t know what would happen if I failed to fulfill my contract with Cavazos. “It’s a nice sentiment. It really is. But it’s just not practical. Didn’t you ever read
Oedipus Rex?
Trying to avoid our fate could damn well be what causes it.”

“This, coming from the woman who’s been trying to avoid it for six years.”

I shrugged. “I didn’t know what else to do. Doing nothing felt like slow suicide. Or homicide. But my point is that no matter how good this feels now, it isn’t going to have a happy ending. I need to know that you understand that.”

“No, I don’t.” He took me by the shoulders, careful of my bandaged arm, and stared down at me with that infuriatingly stubborn hopeful streak. We used to argue opposite sides of the same coin all the time—usually waxing pathetic on the state of human kindness—and I was always the skeptic. I used to think that was because he was gullible. Not quite naive, but just a
little
too trusting of people in general. But if that were the case, the Tower syndicate would have beaten the optimism out of him years ago.