Which meant…if I did love him, I needed to let him go. Get him as far away from me and the tangle of gods and demons and creatures and monsters that made it so I could hurt someone as good as him.
We’d had our beginning. Maybe it was time to have our ending. Dad had said that all endings were just the start of beginnings. Maybe we should slow down our relationship. Maybe we should step back until I had a soul. Until I was all me again.
The rightness of that stuck somewhere deep in my belly, and suddenly I wasn’t hungry anymore. I pushed my plate away.
“I need some time to think. About this. About us. Being…together.”
“That so?”
“I’m not kidding, Ryder.”
“I can see that.” He didn’t move. Neither did I. Whatever he was searching for in my face wasn’t there to be found.
“I need to think about stuff. What I want. What I need now that I’m different.”
“You’re still you, Delaney.” Soft, a caress, his faith in me.
“This isn’t…I’m not breaking up with you.”
“I know.”
“I’m just trying to be smart. Make good decisions. Logical decisions.”
“I know.”
“I think we should take a little break.”
“Nope.”
“It takes two of us to continue this relationship.”
“So let’s continue.”
“I…can’t. I need you to be patient.”
His lips pressed tightly together into a thin line and he finally leaned back away from me.
I missed the heat of him, of his body, his life crowding all up in my space.
“I don’t want you to….” I lifted my hand, wanting to reach out to him, to pull him to me, but gave up on it halfway through the motion.
“What?”
“To give up on us.”
“You just told me you want a break.”
“I do.”
“You want me to wait. Give you room to figure out how to deal with having no soul.”
“Yes. That. Yes.”
He shook his head. “I am good at a lot of things, Delaney, but living without you isn’t one of them.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. What to say to the truth in his eyes.
All that came out was, “I need to check on Jean.”
