“I just look that way. How many times do you have to kill me before you’re happy?”
“McQueen killed you. I’d’ve put you in a cage, but you’d still be breathing.”
“I’d be alive if you’d minded your own.”
She had been minding her own, Eve realized. But why explain? Even in dreams Stella would never comprehend.
“That’s an old tune, Stella. I’m bored with it. Put the kid down.”
“Why should I? You know what this little bitch is worth to the right people? I’ve got to get by, don’t I? You don’t know what it’s like now, here. It’s hell here. I lived through it. What do you think made me what I am?”
“I lived through it.” Mira stood beside Eve, spoke quietly. “So many of us did. She made her choices, Eve, just as I did, just as you did. You know that. Nothing made her. She made herself.”
“What the hell does she know? Fucking shrink with her fancy clothes, fancy ways. She just wants to fuck you over, like everyone else. I’m the one who carried you inside me. I made you.”
Mira barely spared Stella a glance. “You know the truth, and you know the lie. You always have. Say it to me, say the truth.”
“I made myself.”
“Yes. Yes, you made yourself, and did it despite her. She never controlled you, not where it matters. Why do you let her control you now, even here?”
“I can’t. It has to stop.”
“Make it stop,” Mira urged her. “Make it end. Make a choice.”
“Put the kid down, Stella, and walk away. Stay away.”
“You can’t stop me. Put a bullet in me, go ahead. I’ll just come back. And maybe I’ll snap her neck first. It’s easy, all those soft bones. I thought about snapping yours. Whining, crying brat, just like this one.”
“You left me with him instead, so he could beat me, rape me, torment me. But I got through it.”
“By killing. The blood’s still on your hands. Richie’s blood. My blood.”
“I can live with it.” That was the answer, wasn’t it? She could live with it. “Put her down.”
“What do you care?” Stella closed a hand over the soft, tiny neck.
Eve started forward, to end it, and the baby cried out.
“Das!”
Bella. Mavis’s Bella, with tears streaming, her arms held out.
On a hot spurt of fury, Eve pressed the barrel of the gun to Stella’s forehead. “Let her go, you bitch, or I’ll splatter your brains on the sidewalk.”
“She’s nothing to you.”
“They’re all something to me. Mira, take the kid.”
“Of course. There now, sweetheart.” Sliding Belle from Stella’s grip, Mira nuzzled her. “Everything’s all right. Eve won’t let anything happen to you.”
“She’s just another brat. Plenty more where she came from.”
“Not for you. You’re finished.”
Stella’s eyes gleamed. “What? You’re going to shoot me now?” She held up her hands. “You’re going to shoot me when I’m unarmed?”
“No, I don’t have to kill what’s already dead.” Eve holstered her weapon, watched Stella’s smile spread. And rammed her fist, with all her force—her anger, her despair—into that smiling face. “But I think I’ve needed to do that for a long time.”
Stella lay on the sidewalk, as she’d laid on the floor of McQueen’s apartment. The blood pooled around her, a black lake in the shadowed dark.
“You can come back. I’ll just kick your ass again.”
“Well done,” Mira commented.
“Where’s Bella? Where’s the kid?”
“She’s safe. They’re all safe tonight. You just needed to put a face on the innocent. It’s easier for you to stand for them than it is for yourself. Tonight you did both. I’m proud of you.”
“I punched a dead woman. That makes you proud?”
“So literal.”
“She’ll come back.”
“And you’ll beat her back again. You’re stronger than she is. You always were.” Mira took Eve’s hand, looked toward the fire in the sky. “These were terrible times. Out of terrible times, perhaps more than ordinary ones, heroes and villains spring. Sometimes there’s little difference between them but a choice, and the choice made defines them. Look at the choices.”
“Whose?”
“It started here, didn’t it? It’s time to go.”
She woke in the dark, steady and warm. No shakes or unloosed screams in her head. So she lay for a moment, still. She’d dreamed quiet, she decided, as Roarke slept undisturbed beside her. And she felt the considerable weight of the cat, heavy across her feet.
Not quite a nightmare, not quite a dream—and not quite a solution, she thought. But progress. She’d have to think about it, about choices, and about the fact it had felt so damn liberating to punch the image of her dead mother in the face.
She wasn’t entirely sure what that said about her, but she figured she’d be okay with it.
In fact, she felt pretty much okay now. Sort of happy, definitely energized.
She shifted, propped up a little as her eyes adjusted. She hardly ever got to watch Roarke sleep. Most of the time he rose before she did. And sleep for her tended to be wandering in lucid, often disturbing dreams, or an absolute exhausted void.
He looked peaceful, and God, so beautiful. How did genes decide to mix themselves up, combine and create such serious beauty? It didn’t seem quite fair to the rest of the population.
Then again, all that serious beauty belonged to her.
Screw the rest of the population.
“There now.” He murmured it, reaching for her. “Ssh. I’m right here.”
Could he hear her think now? she wondered, but went with it when he drew her close.
“Did you have a nightmare?”
“Sort of.”
“It’s all right.” He stroked her back, brushed a kiss over her hair.
“It’s all right now.”
Look at him, she thought, comforting her. So ready to soothe and hold. Could she be any luckier?
“I’m okay.”
“Are you cold? I’ll light the fire.”
Love simply swamped her. “I’m not cold. Not now.” She rolled over, onto him, laid her lips on his. “How are you?”
She saw his eyes, the dazzle of them close to her own. “Curious at the moment.”
“I had a dream. I’ll tell you about it.” But now she swept kisses over his face. “Then I woke up, and it was good. You were sleeping, and the cat was weighing down my feet. And it was all so good. The world’s so fucked up, Roarke, but right here? It’s all just exactly right.”
He trailed his fingers over the back of her legs, along her hips. “It feels just exactly right.”
“You’re probably tired. That’s okay. You can go back to sleep, and I’ll take care of this.”
“Oh, I think I can manage to stay awake, with the proper motivation.” He rolled her over, pressed center to center. “And there it is.”
“At times like this, I like that men are so easy.”
“Handily, I feel the same. It’s easy enough when I have my wife under me, warm and soft.”
“Maybe.” She hooked his legs with hers, reversed positions again. “But I like having my man under me, hot and hard.”
“That must’ve been some dream.”
She laughed, nipped at his jaw. “Not that kind. Besides, I like this better when it’s real.” She levered up, lifted off the nightshirt she’d pulled on, tossed it aside.
His hands slid up her torso to her breasts. “Again, we agree.”
She pressed her hands to his, closed her eyes as pleasure, easy as breath, wound through her. His hands, his skin, his body, taut and chiseled, under hers. Oh yes, so much better than dreams.
He rose to her, wrapped around her as their mouths met. Deep and slow. Their bodies pressed close, a single shadow in the quiet dark as her hands combed through his hair, tangled there.