“He loves you.” Marc glanced at Jace over my shoulder, then refocused on me. “But I love you more. He could walk away from you with a broken heart, if he had to, and live to love another day. But I can’t. Since the first time we kissed, there’s never been anyone for me but you. Not in my bed, not in my life, and not in my heart. And there never will be. And that’s what I need to hear from you. Now.” His hope, and fear, and desperation, were so thick in the room that I could hardly breathe. “Purgatory’s just another kind of hell, Faythe.”

“I…” I curled my hands into fists to keep them from shaking. On the edge of my vision, Jace stiffened, waiting for my answer, every bit as tense as Marc was, and my heart throbbed within the vise of my chest. “I can’t…I can’t do this right now.” I could only juggle so many crises at a time, and I couldn’t afford to be rushed into a decision that would determine the course of the rest of my life. And both of theirs. I had to be sure, beyond any possibility of a doubt.

Otherwise, I’d be ruining us all.

Marc blinked. Reactions passed over his face too quickly for me to focus on, but the kaleidoscope of emotions ended in pain and anger. Then, suddenly, his face was blank. He’d locked me out, and that realization bruised me deep in my soul.

“Fine.” His voice cracked on that one syllable, and he backed slowly across the room toward the door, jaw clenched. “But I can’t hang around and wait for you to make up your mind. I’m done with this.” One hand on the doorknob, he turned to Jace and spoke through clenched teeth. “Don’t let her follow me. Do you understand?”

Jace nodded, mute. Obviously stunned beyond words.

Then the door slammed, and Marc was gone.

“No!” The closing door—a sight I would forever associate with devastating loss—shook my very foundation, triggering a tsunami of remorse and anguish I could not surface from. The pain inside was like nothing I’d ever felt. Dean could beat me to death an inch at a time and it wouldn’t compare to having my heart ripped out and shredded in front of me.

Was this how Marc felt when he found out about Jace…?

“Marc!” I raced across the room, but Jace beat me to the door. “Move! I have to catch him.”

“No. Faythe, no…” Jace held me back, and when I tried to push him away from the door, he picked me up and held me. I reached around him, clawing the wooden door frame when I couldn’t reach the knob. My nails broke. Blood streaked the door, but I hardly felt that pain—my fingers couldn’t compare to my heart. To the other half of my soul that had gone missing.

“Let me go!” I didn’t realize I was crying until I saw teardrops soaking into Jace’s shirt. “Put me down!”

He set me down, but stood firm in front of the door, and I hardly recognized the pained lines spanning his forehead.

I took a deep breath. “Jace, get the hell out of my way.”

He exhaled slowly and stared straight into my eyes, holding me by both arms. “He doesn’t want to see you right now. I’m sorry. I didn’t want it to go down like this, but you heard him.”

Yeah, I’d heard him. But I didn’t believe him. He’d dumped me once before, but that hadn’t lasted. This wouldn’t, either, so long as I could find him before he’d gone too far to follow… “Last warning, Jace. Move.”

“I can’t. I’m sorry…”

My fist slammed into his cheek, and Jace’s head smacked the door. “Damn it!” He rubbed his face and the angry line of his jaw rivaled the devastation behind his eyes. “You fucking hit me!” His blue eyes narrowed and he crossed his arms over his chest like a nightclub bouncer. “He doesn’t want to see you, Faythe. And I don’t blame him. You have a right to make your choice, but he has a right to his, too, and he made it.”

I shook all over; the room blurred beneath tears I couldn’t stop.

Jace sighed and uncrossed his arms. “Faythe.” I looked up to find him staring down at me, his blue eyes dark like the sky before a storm. “He’s gone.”

“No…” I fell onto my knees, clutching at my stomach, trying to fight the hollow feeling growing inside me. “He can’t be. He promised…” I sniffled, and pain flared to life in my still-kind-of-broken nose.

Jace sank to the floor in front of me, his back against the door. He pulled me into his lap and I wrapped myself around him, my chin on his shoulder, his pale stubble rough against my wet cheek. I put one palm against the cold metal door, willing it to open. Willing Marc to be standing there.

But Jace was right. He was gone, and the closed door wasn’t going to deliver my miracle.

“What am I going to do without him?” I whispered, as Jace’s hand smoothed my hair down my back and slow tears trailed toward my chin.

He inhaled, and his chest expanded beneath mine, solid and warm. “You’re going to cry, then you’re going to pick yourself up and keep going, because there are a lot of other people depending on you now, with or without Marc.”

Even beneath the weight of this new catastrophe, I knew Jace was right. I held him tighter. “But I get to cry first?”

In reply, he guided my head onto his shoulder and stroked my hair again as I sobbed.

Later, when my tears were spent and his legs were probably half-dead from lack of circulation, I sat up and leaned my forehead against his. “Thank you.”