Shattered Promises 02 - Fractured Souls Read Free

warily.
    He takes a deep breath and gradually frees it, his fingertips massaging my kneecap. “When I gave you the necklace, I wasn’t just giving it to you because it belonged to you. I gave it to you because it has sugilite in it,” he says. I’m about to ask him what sugilite is when he adds, “That’s the purple stone in the center of the locket. It protects whoever’s wearing it from certain kinds of magic.” He pauses. “Like the mind erasing kind of magic.”
    “I thought you said my mother gave me the necklace when I was little?” I ask. “Did she give it to me to protect me from something, too?”
    He sweeps my hair back off my shoulder and I tense, unsure why he is so persistent about touching me. “She gave it to you because you have the star’s energy in you. It was her way of trying to protect you from anyone who tried to use magic on you to get to the star’s power.”
    “So why didn’t it work when I was little?” My voice is sharp and bitter. “When Sophia detached my soul from my emotions? Why didn’t it protect me then?”
    Alex shuts his eyes, his face contorted in pain. “Stephan knew what it was and he took it off you before Sophia detached your soul.” He opens his eyes and they’re glossed over. “That’s why I tucked it into your shirt in the Jeep. So he wouldn’t see it and take it off.”
    I remember when Alex was about to climb out of the Jeep back at the cabin in Colorado. The Death Walkers and Stephan had just shown up and stopped us from running away. Alex had reached over and tucked the locket under the collar of my shirt, whispering, whatever you do, keep that hidden. Don’t let anyone know you have it .
    “So you were planning all along to save me.” I’m doubtful because none of this makes sense. There are so many questions without answers, like why Stephan and the Death Walkers would just walk away.
    He shrugs. “Pretty much.”
    “But that goes against everything you said… how my soul had to be detached or else the star’s power would die and then the portal would open and the world would end.” I frown, thinking of my dooming fate. That I might die, or live and be hollow, neither of which were options that I wanted. I want normalcy, plain and simple.
    His hand slides up my thigh and halts at the top of my shorts and the rage burning inside me fizzles. My heart and body want one thing and my mind another. What do I want?
    “Things changed between us… you know that. When we… after we…” He drifts off.
    “Had sex.” I strive to sound blasé, but my cheeks heat.
    His eyes are secured on mine and he displays no emotions at all. “It was more than that, wasn’t it?”
    My cheeks flame even hotter, though I refuse to look away. “I have no idea… I have nothing else to compare it to. Besides, that was my fault... I pretty much begged you to do it.”
    He keeps one hand on my thigh and reaches his free hand up to cup my face. Being touched intimately always throws me off guard since I didn’t experience any human connection for about fourteen years. Something as simple as being touched both frightens and enthralls me to the point where I do irrational things, solely based on my hormones.
    “You asked me to kiss you. I’m the one that took it that far because I…” he grapples for words he never does find. “And I meant what I said when I woke you up. If my father wouldn’t have shown up, I would have gotten you out of there and hid until we figured something out.”
    “But we didn’t make it that far, did we?” I scoot away from him. “And then you held that rock up in front of me…”
    He rubs his hand across his face, letting his fingers linger on the smudged black spot on the middle of his forehead.
    “What happened to your head?” I reach out to touch him, but then retreat. The last thing I want to do is trust him again and end up in a situation like back at the cabin in Colorado.
    “It’s from the memoria extracto ,” he