Aiden stands and stops in front of me. “Considering your human rights situation, I’ll answer your question. Yes, I would have done it. There’s the world and there’s Elsa, and she always comes first. Now, you just have to decide if you’re ready to burn.”

I fall on the bed, cradling the bottle to my chest.

“Is that a no?” Aiden asks.

“At least we tried.” Cole flops on the chair beside me. “This will be a long fucking night.”

“Fuck this.” Aiden sits on the other side of me. “I’m not supposed to be here.”

“He sent me a text telling me she said yes to fucking him tonight. First date and all that.” I laugh, but there’s no humour. “She fucking said yes and I freed her of the promise I always held over her head.”

I attempt to take a sip from the bottle, but Cole takes it away.

“You’ll start vomiting and I’m in no mood to clean puke.”

“Aside from babysitting your self-pity party, he means,” Aiden adds.

I fall on the bed and stare at the ceiling. “I freed her of me.”

“Do you think you did the right thing?” Cole stares down at me with his fucking green eyes and I’m tempted to poke out and maybe put in a jar.

“Yes.” My voice breaks and I cover my eyes with the back of my hand, hiding the moisture that gathers there.

No.

Somehow, I fall asleep and somehow, I dream of her.

I always dream of her when I’m at my lowest and when I’m at my highest.

Instead of Aiden and Cole’s arsehole presence, gentle hands are pulling my arm from my face. Cole’s soulless green eyes are replaced by her soft, inviting ones.

There’s moisture in their brightness, too, as if she also wants to cry.

The Kim in my dreams is a play of my imagination. She looks so real while she touches me, while she strokes my hair back like she used to do when we were kids.

A few of my favourite memories always begin with me laying my head on her lap, her stroking my hair, and me handpicking the fucking green M&M’s for her before I ate the other colours.

Then I fed her the pistachio gelato while she read her magical stories about wizards and princes and kingdoms aloud.

And knights.

Lots of fucking knights. Even if there wasn’t one, she made them up and inserted them everywhere.

My knight, she used to call me.

Now, I’m a rusty one without armour or a sword.

I abandoned being her knight to become War.

“Why have you been drinking again?” she asks in a brittle voice. “What happened to your hand?”

“Shh, don’t ruin it. Just stay like this.” I lift my head and set it on her lap so that I’m staring up at her.

The Kimberly from my dreams always tells me what a fuck-up I am and that I can do better, just as before. I can be a knight instead of War.

But not today. Today is fucked up.

Today, she’s with Ronan and I can’t do anything about it. Today, I have Cole and Aiden as my guardians because they don’t want me to do some stupid shit like getting myself killed in a gang fight.

I reach out a hand and touch her cheek with my fingers. She trembles underneath my skin as if she always wanted me to do that. My palm burns due to the cut, but I almost don’t feel it.

“You’re so beautiful, Green, and I fucking hate you for it.”

“Xan…” My nickname catches in her mouth like she doesn’t want to say it. “What the hell? You’re not supposed to call me that.”

“And you’re not supposed to be here. I freed you.”

“What if I don’t want to be freed?”

“A masochist, aren’t you now?”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe, huh?” I smile. “I’m going to do bad things to you.”

I’ll hate it in the morning, and I’ll hate myself for it, but if I only get this in dreams, then so be it.

Her eyes widen. “B-bad things like what?”

I lift my head and wrap a hand around her nape. “Like this.”

My lips meet hers and I feast on her the way I’ve always wanted.

I embrace the temptation I’ve always run away from.

16

Kimberly

Kissing has always been a fantasy for me. That consuming passion, that need for more.

I blame romance books for this, by the way.

That day at Ronan's party, I thought I knew what kissing is like. A bit of passion, a bit of force, a lot of heartbreak.

Now, a different type of emotion seeps into me as Xander takes possession of my mouth.

Desperation.

That’s the right word. It’s the only emotion that whirls through me, and it does so with wrecking force.

I let him kiss me like it’s our first and last kiss together. I don’t care if we never get anything after this, as long as he kisses me with this desperation and the need to own me, be with me.

He tastes of vodka and mint, a strong mix that hits me straight in the chest. I inhale him deeply and don’t dare to exhale, afraid it will end the moment and we’ll go back to our separate worlds as if we were never meant to be.

When Mari told me the monkey, Kir, came here to spend the night, I might have cursed my little brother.

After the text Xander sent me, blatantly pushing me away once more, I was ready for my comfort K-dramas and my moody playlist.

The thought of confronting him made me want to cry, but I’ve tried so hard not to cry all this time, so I won’t be doing it now.

The fog becomes stronger when I cry, and he’s been feeding it non-stop for years.

Ahmed welcomed me in, saying Kir was asleep. I considered waking him up, but I couldn’t disturb him. Besides, as soon as I was in the guest room Kir was in, Cole and Aiden came knocking at the door. They said Xander was in trouble.

I didn’t think when I ran here, when I pushed the door and walked inside with wobbly legs. He was sleeping upside down on the bed, his head lolling over the side and his hand bandaged, covered with dry blood and dangling from the edge.

The first thing I did was check his pulse. I was going to leave once I made sure he was alive, I really was. But one touch of his hair turned into two, and before I knew it, I was sitting on his bed and then he opened his eyes and called me Green, and I kind of lost it.

I’m losing it right now.

Because I know by experience that his kisses, his slight moments of closeness, only have heartbreak tied to them. If he freed me of our twelve years’ promise after the first kiss, what is he going to do now? Demand I sell my soul to the devil? Make me watch as he stomps all over my heart?

I place two hands on his strong shoulders and shove him away. His lips leave mine with a whimper – from my side, not his. Why the hell am I mourning his loss when I never had him in the first place?

“Xander, I –”

“Shh.” He places an index finger on my lips, which are hot and tingly because of him. “Don’t ruin it.”

I push his hand away, careful not to hurt his injury, and take another deep inhale, then regret it because all I breathe is him. “You’re the one who ruins everything.”

“No, you did.” His eyes are half-droopy, and his face is so pained, it’s like being shot at and not having the ability to die.