Master of Death (Hollow #2)

CHAPTER 21

I keep my luggage in the car trunk.

I head to the kitchen at Damon’s after removing my coat.

I’m ready for war when I spot Damon.

“Gemma, are you kidding me?” He walks toward me, and from the weary look on his face, he hasn’t been sleeping. “Where the hell have you been?”

“I was at my sister’s cottage.”

He scoffs. “And you couldn’t have answered your phone or texted me that, so I don’t lose my fucking mind?”

“I had to leave. I needed space.”

“If I were anyone else , any other boss, wouldn’t you have let them know as soon as you left?”

I gulp, refusing to let him guilt-trip me. “But you’re not, and you don’t get to be mad at me.” I take the purple journal that’s on the counter where I left it and brandish it. “Explain.”

His hands immediately cover his face before he drops them. “Explain why you went through my things again?”

“Don’t you DARE!” I don’t recognize the scream that leaves my mouth. My hands are a quivering mess. I feel so physically sick, and mentally—mentally, this is the last straw.

Screw my time in nature. Clearly, I’m still angry because I feel fucking betrayed .

“Damon, please, please, please tell me it isn’t true.” I take a step closer to him, and he recoils, his jaw on lockdown.

“I fucked up ... and it’s on me. I know that.”

“So it’s true then?” My voice trembles. “Palmer hit Harvey that night.”

After he nods, I reach the liar in no time.

He grabs my wrists while I lose it. “You broke him . You broke him, and then you made me fall in love with you! Why did you let us keep going? Why did you HIRE me?”

For the first time in my life, I can’t contain the waterworks. They fall and they fall, all the tears I’ve been carrying. The screaming lady has cried enough of my tears. Now it’s time I cry my own. It doesn’t stop, blurring my vision.

“Why did you tease me and—”

“Because it was harmless! There was no fucking harm at first, Gemma—then, fuck! Suddenly, everything changed, and I couldn’t. I didn’t want to lose you.” He dries my tears with his thumb while I shake my head. “I didn’t hire you. Katherine did. I was so busy that week I only did a background check after you started. I might’ve kept you out of guilt, because it was the least I could do, but then you proved your worth.”

“Is that why you pay me more?”

“The pay is fair for your education. Stop selling yourself short.”

“Damon.” I push my wrists against his chest with his hands still wrapped around them. “How could you do this to us? I just want to know what was going through your mind.”

I see nothing but fear in his eyes. He swallows and tries to bring me in for a hug but I refuse. The electricity I feel when he grabs my hand afterward is out of this world. The chill hits me in the deepest marrow of my bones.

Lust from dust.

“The night we went out with everyone when you first started, you FaceTimed your ex-boyfriend, and there was this girl in the background.”

When he looks down at me, he’s pleading, his eyes asking for what his mouth never will—for forgiveness.

“You looked so sad, Gemma. I decided then and there that I wouldn’t pursue you, but I wouldn’t stop you either. But you know what? Maybe that’s a lie too. Maybe I did want to pursue you subconsciously.”

I leave the warmth of his hand and reach the living room, where I pace. For the first time, I look like drunk Damon. I wish I were drunk, because then I wouldn’t feel this crippling need to drop to my knees and curl up to survive.

“Were you ever going to tell me? If I hadn’t found out, Damon, would you have told me?”

A snicker leaves his mouth as he thumbs his jawline. “You found the diary, didn’t you? It’s not like I tried hard to hide it.”

God, I want to hurt him right now. “Would. You. Have. Told. Me?”

“The truth?” he asks, and I nod. “I don’t know,” he says so low I process his words a few times before registering them.

“Wow ... and here I thought you were an angel who saved me. Th-the guy in my dreams was you, wasn’t he? The guy at the hospital—was he you?”

“Save you? You think I saved you? Gemma, you could’ve been seriously injured. You could’ve died when your bike skidded off the road! And I protected her.”

“I could’ve been seriously injured? Damon, it’s not about me—it’s about Harvey! What about his life?”

He lets out a laugh—raw and sharp like the tip of a knife. “Your life will always trump anyone else’s. Always.”

Then his eyes guiltily avoid mine.

“Nothing would’ve reversed his paralysis. The damage was done. So, I did the next best thing. I donated through charitable contributions, and I’ll admit, some I anonymously donated to his parents. I came to the hospital that night to make sure you were okay. I’m lucky it was a smaller hospital—it was easier to access without being seen.”

Oh, my God. This entire time the donations Harvey received were from Damon? It takes me a minute to wrap my head around it as I piece everything together.

“Wouldn’t donations make it suspicious?”

He shrugs. “I gave small sums at a time under various accounts. There’s no piece of evidence tying us to that night.” Shame crosses his features.

“You told me once you sold your bike. Was it after the accident?”

“No, it was way before everything happened.”

“Why did you bring me back to a track if you knew my past? What if I would’ve been triggered by it?”

“Because, Gemma, by the way you talked about motorcycles on the plane ride to LA, I was certain you missed it.”

My tears are drying, but my heart is bleeding, the liquid merging with my dead cells. That’s how I feel—dead. Like there’s no tomorrow and no future with Damon.

No more happiness.

A future without him in my life is bleak and mundane.

What am I going to do?

I thought having some space from him would help me figure it out but it hasn’t.

The hurt in his eyes kills me when I see it, but he has to understand! He has to understand that even though Palmer’s accident was on her, he covered up a hit-and-run with her parents. It’s so morally and legally wrong.

And it hurt the happy blue-eyed boy. It deeply impacted his life.

“I’m so mad at you right now. I can’t even look at you, Damon.” I shake my head. “I keep thinking about what kind of person could hide something this important from the person they love.”

“I know sorry doesn’t cut it—”

“No, you’re right. It doesn’t. Because you still betrayed me, and Harvey still can’t walk the way he used to.”

Damon looks wan, and he takes a step back as if I slapped him across the face.

How am I supposed to forgive the man I love for hurting the man I used to love? For hurting me? For lying to me?

“I’m going to my dad’s tonight.”

“So this is the new plan? You’ll keep running away from me and ignoring me?”

“No, Damon. The new plan is that I need space from you and your poor decision-making.”

“Gemma, don’t go. Stay the night. I can sleep in the guest bedroom.”

The biggest part of me is begging my inner sanity to leave—to run from Damon—to think about what he did to Harvey.

But I’m so tired and I’m nauseated again. So, I lie down on the couch, grabbing the faux-fur blanket. I wish I’d never found out. I wish I’d never asked. I wish I’d never read the diaries.

Then I could’ve kept going and been happy with Damon.

Because I love him too much, and that’s the honest truth.

What kind of monster does it make me that I don’t want to leave him over this? That I’ve chosen him over Harvey?

“All this time I asked you questions about Palmer, and I just realized you barely, if ever, asked me anything about Harv. Because you knew. You already knew.”

He sits on the coffee table, pushing my hair behind my ear. I should recoil from his touch. I should leave. And I might . I might leave . I need the strength to do it, though, and right now, I don’t have an ounce of it.

I keep thinking of Harvey—depressed, unhappy, unsmiling until Claire came around. And my heart freezes.

“He tried to kill himself on Thursday.”

Damon stops touching me.

“Is he okay? Is he at the hospital?” He lands on the couch and scoops me into his lap, and despite everything, it makes me feel safe and sheltered and his .

“No.” I clear my throat. “He’s home—on watch. Henrik told him we were moving in together ... he found him in the kitchen that morning about to take a bunch of pills. Harv says he wasn’t really going to do it, but you never know.” My breath stalls.

If something would’ve happened to him.

Holy fuck—what would I have done?

I love Damon a little more for the fact that he doesn’t tell me it isn’t my fault. I suspect with the amount of guilt he still feels over everything that happened with Palmer, he knows those words wouldn’t soothe me either way.

Because shame courses through my veins, reminding me of ocean-blue eyes.

If Harvey knew or even Henrik, I’d lose them both forever.

But telling anyone could punish Damon, since he fled the scene of a hit-and-run and covered up the accident with Palmer’s parents.

“She was sick at the time; I could feel her slipping through my fingers. I didn’t know why until I read her journals,” he says, his mouth right next to my ear, his arms keeping a strong grip around me.

“Her parents hated the idea of getting her help, of medicating her. But still, I knew, and I let her drive even though we fought the whole way about it. And I can never take that back.”

I stare at his Adam’s apple as he swallows, his eyes locked on the wall ahead, unmoving.

“Leaving you two behind and covering it up was wrong, but I would’ve done anything to protect her at the time.”

I ignore him, knowing deep down that if the tables were reversed, I might’ve done the same thing for Harvey or Damon or Gia.

I want to ask how she died, how she committed suicide, but I can’t. A part of me is too focused on the blinding truth that finally spilled to care about anything else.

“I’m so sorry, Red. I’m sorry I lied. I’m sorry she almost killed you. I’m sorry about Harvey. I ruined your relationship with him.”

I shake my head, then settle it in the crook of his neck. He didn’t crush my relationship. Perhaps indirectly he did—if Palmer hadn’t hit Harv, then he’d be walking, and none of this would’ve happened.

But then Damon wouldn’t be in my life, and I can’t for the life of me even think of wanting a life where he’s not in it. No matter how awful and selfish that makes me.

I don’t want to leave.

God, I don’t want to leave him. Us.

But I have to. He lied.

I wish I would’ve listened to Damon. Why did I have to go and chase his truths?

“I don’t feel so good,” I whisper against his chest. “I feel sick again.”

“Again?” Damon eyes me curiously, his thumb on my neckline. When I nod, he lifts me into his arms, treating me like a delicate feather all the way to our bedroom.

“I left my stuff in my dad’s car.”

“I’ll take care of it,” he reassures me, removing my clothes and draping his own T-shirt over my body.

Despite our fight, the gesture itself makes me feel so loved.

“I’m so sorry, Gemma,” Damon says when I land in bed. I wish I could seal his apology with a kiss, but then I remember the despair seeping through my black veins, and instead I pull the covers over myself.

As he leans down, he presses his lips to my forehead. “Sweet dreams.”

Only of you.