Her body relaxed as she sat back against the chair. “We were stupid.”
“Sure,” I said. “That too. Which is to be expected from a couple kids. We’ve learned a lot. We’ve been through a lot.”
She glanced at my arm, then back to me.
“Both of us have been through a lot,” I said, trying to find the words to tell her I understood her fear for me, because I carried the same fear for her.
I searched for the words that would bring her back to me or bring me to her. I wanted to be inside the walls she’d put up for my safety, for her own.
We were better together, our strengths and weaknesses balancing and bracing.
“I’m sorry.” I lifted my wrapped arm. “For this.”
She shook her head, but I went on. “I’m sorry you…sorry Atë…the farmhouse. You were hurt, I know you were hurt, and I wish I could have….”
“Brogan, don’t…it’s…that isn’t... I’m fine. Fine about that.”
“But we’re not fine, love. I want to fix us. Fix me, if that’s the problem.”
She touched my arm.
I was breathing hard, working against a tidal wave of emotions.
“We could walk away,” I blurted.
She blinked. “From what?”
The air felt heavier, hotter. The air conditioner chugged, its cold breeze stabbing stiff, ineffective fingers into the space.
Abbi whispered nonsense words to Lorde, who was making noises back at her. Maybe she had her own language. Maybe the Moon Rabbit spoke Earth Dog.
“From everything,” I said catching at my drowning thoughts.
This. This was the one thing I’d never allowed myself to consider all these years.
That maybe it hadn’t been love holding us together, but that the reason we’d stayed with each other, held hope for each other, was only so we could get revenge on the monsters that had destroyed our lives.
“The Route.” I cleared my throat. “The search for the spellbook. The search for the monsters who attacked us. Everything. We could walk away from everything.”
Had I said too much? Asked too much of her?
“Is that what you want?” Her voice was carefully neutral. No teasing lilt, no sardonic eyebrow rise.
“I want us,” I said.
She licked her bottom lip. “Thisisus, Brogan. It has always been us.”
“Our life has always been chasing something out of our past? Chasing things that hurt us or that other people want us to find for them? When we were alive…”
“That life is gone.”
“We can…”
“No. We can not,” she said very clearly. “We aren’t innocent. We aren’t children. Not anymore. Not for years.” She glanced away again, her gaze falling to the medical trash.
“I…I am trying to appreciate your intent,” she said, as if she were feeling out a cliff’s edge. “You want to…take a break from…this.”
“That’s not…”
