Out of the Dark by Megan Hart Page A

didn’t.”
    â€œNot yet,” Luke said.
    â€œBreakfast?” Celia looked toward the fridge where she knew she had eggs and bacon and frozen hash browns, but was unable to force herself to get out of her chair and cook them.
    She’d just survived dying at the hands of a monster. Literally. Breakfast seemed so mundane after that.
    â€œKiss me,” she told him. He leaned across the table and did. Her eyes were still closed when he pulled back, and she left them that way to say, “On second thought, if you’re going to leave, you should do it now before I invest any more time.”
    â€œCelia…”
    Her eyes opened. She shook her head. “No. No excuses. You can run away.”
    His eyes flashed. “I’m not running away.”
    â€œNo?” She got up and went to the fridge. The cold air bathed her suddenly too-warm face. She looked at the eggs, the cheese, the small bowl of broccoli she’d cut up before being taken. It would be wilted by now. No good. “What do you call it, then?”
    He was up behind her, not touching her but close enough that he could if he wanted to. “I just think it’d be better if I go. There might be trouble.”
    â€œWorse than being kidnapped by something out of a horror movie and fed upon?” she asked in a flat voice. She closed her eyes again, exhausted. When she turned to look at him, she hated what she saw. “If you don’t want me, just go. I’m tired of begging you to stay.”
    â€œIf I don’t…how could you even think that?”
    â€œHow could I think anything else?” She tossed up her hands.
    Luke looked bleak. “It never would’ve happened if—“
    â€œIf what?”
    Celia stepped up to him as he backed away. “If I hadn’t met you? If those things hadn’t attacked you in the first place? What, Luke?”
    â€œIf I hadn’t gone after them!” he shouted. “Those monsters killed my parents, my sister, her family. They came after everyone I love!”
    She opened her mouth to shout back, but stopped, stunned. Tears burned in her eyes at the thought of what he’d lost, how she hadn’t even known. She swallowed the razors in her throat. “I’m so, so sorry.”
    He shook his head and moved two steps toward her to take her by the upper arms. Last night he’d been too gentle with her, but now he had no such softness. His fingers pinched, and she winced but didn’t try to get away.
    â€œYou weren’t listening,” Luke said. “Everyone I love. That’s you too, Celia. I love you.”
    â€œThen why do you want to keep walking away from me?” she cried. “All you’ve ever done is leave me, over and over, and I understood it when I thought it was something you had to do…because of those things out there. Because of what you’d taken upon yourself to do. I thought I could understand, then, but it’s over Luke. It’s all over now.”
    â€œIs it?” He shook his head again, turning on his heel to pace as he ran his hands through his hair. It had grown longer than she’d ever seen it, still too short to do more than stand on end from his rumpling fingers. “That thing that took you. I killed it. But I don’t think it was the very last one, Celia. I can still hear…something. Maybe I’m just crazy, maybe I’ll always just be crazy.”
    He looked up at her, eyes red-rimmed, mouth grim. “But what if there are other things out there? Not just like what I found in that cave, but other monsters?”
    â€œLet someone else hunt them!” she shouted, stamping her foot so hard it sent shocks of pain traveling her entire body.
    Luke’s shoulders hunched. “It’s my fault you were taken,” he said in a low, broken voice and turned his back on her. “It’s my fault you were almost killed. If I leave, maybe you’ll be