Eli was easy to love. He was charming, smart, easy to talk to. He didn’t pretend to be anything he wasn’t. What you saw was what you got, and it was all good.
Eli took care of everyone around him. I only took care of myself.
Saul was back again, muttering about Celine and solstices. I let myself fade into the background, watching my brothers get comfortable as if this was normal.
Some stranger in on our secret.
I was so concentrated on acting sane that I didn’t notice Eli sidle up beside me. “Are you going to go get her? Or should we send Saul?”
“Don’t you dare tell him where she is. He’s more likely to send her into hiding.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
I tugged on my hair, hating the way it flopped in my face. I should just cut it all off. Forget the stupid gel. The stupid jeans. Every part of the costume I wore to fit into a world that I didn’t belong in.
This was my world. It was dark and violent. Everything that a woman like Tara wasn’t.
How did you bring someone like her into this? It wasn’t fair.
Maybe I should send Saul. Give him that bag of cash Eli was hiding—it was rightfully hers anyway, after what Jacques put her through.
She would disappear, and the Barbeaux curse wouldn’t become a noose around her neck like it had for the rest of us.
A howl split my thoughts in two, so piercing and agonized that my eyes fell shut.
No.The beast wouldn’t give her up. He would scour the countryside, searching every corner of the continent and beyond to find her.
He didn’t live this long just to give up the only redemption he’d ever get.
Eli’s hand was on my shoulder, his words swimming in my ears. I couldn’t make out what he was saying. I was too focused on the beast, considering him in a new light.
I’d hated him for as long as I had known him. I didn’t want to be thisthing.
But for the first time, I realized that he didn’t want to be it either. He didn’t choose this any more than I did.
Even if he was beholden to his most base instincts, he never hurt anyone on purpose. He was loyal to his brothers. He was loyal toTara.
Before he knew her name.
Who would have thought he was a Goddamn romantic?
“Isaac?” Eli shook me. “Are you listening?”
I thought the problem was the beast, and the horrible life I would give any woman that had to deal with him.
Maybehewas never the problem. He was another excuse.
The problem was me. The Barbeaux fuck up. I tried to make up for it by working hard. By never getting attached to anything enough to ruin it.
And what did that get me?
A cold, empty house. Brothers who barely knew who I was anymore. Hundreds of nights spent coated in perfume and alcohol, all of them blurring together into one solid knot of regret.
I didn’t know how to get it right.
“I told you, I’m a piece of shit. She knows it. I know it. You all know it.”
“You’re an asshole. I’m an asshole. Saul gets the asshole of the century award. It runs in the family. So what?”