But had their general distaste for conformity and government done more harm than good? Was that the biggest reason they chose to hide their children’s abilities andnotwhat was really in their best interest?
All she could do was shrug. “They made a choice. I don’t know if it was the right one, but Clementine and I turned out all right. We just have… quirks.”
Quirks.Right. A cutesy word for abilities that made living amongst the general population almost impossible.
“Okay.” Clark was quiet for a moment, probably processing all the information she’d dumped on him, before he asked in a strained voice, “So, if you wanted to have sex—”
“I’d learn everything about my partner the instant our skin touched, yes.”
She could feel his eyes on her even when she looked away. “Have you?”
“Yes. I’ve had a handful of partners. All ended… badly.”
A soft touch to her blanket-covered arm drew her eyes back to Clark. His expression was pained when he said, “I’d like to know, if you want to tell me.”
The words tasted sour in her mouth, but she spoke them anyway. “My first boyfriend said things behind my back as soon as his friends found out we were dating. Called me names, joked with his friends about how weird and clingy I was. I found out when he asked me to give him a blowjob the next day.”
All teenage relationships were messy, but it was hard to top that. Finding out your boyfriend didn’t evenlikeyou when you had his cock in your mouth?Real top tier shit.
Before Clark could say anything, she plowed ahead. “Then I had a girlfriend in college. Well, when I was taking my online classes. It was great until she learned about my ability. After a couple tries, she said it was too invasive. Like I had eyes in my hands and they werelookingevery time we touched. She couldn’t get past the anxiety that I was going to see something I didn’t like, or that she’d never be able to have even a tiny secret in the future.”
She couldn’t even say she blamed Shannon. Itwasinvasive. There was no way around that. It took a special kind of person to be completely okay with no secrets, no privacy at all.
“And then…” She sucked in a deep breath. “Then I met a ranger at the Orclind training outpost I’d been assigned to. I told him from the beginning, just to get it out there, and he was okay with it. When I finally worked up the courage to touch him, I was so, so careful. I didn’t dig, I shored up my barriers for weeks and weeks. I only saw flashes, nothing bad. He seemed so normal.”
She could see in Clark’s eyes that he comprehended what that meant for her, and how crushing it was to know the story didn’t have a happy ending.
Not wanting to get into the grisly details, she whispered, “Suffice it to say I was wrong. He didn’t care about what I might see because he didn’tcare. He didn’t give a shit what I saw or how I felt. Howanyonefelt. I found out he was cheating on me when he kissed me on my birthday.”
“Motherfucker.”
Nelly tried not to revel in the way Clark bared his teeth, his expression a picture of pure outrage.
Lance lacked empathy, but in a way he’d always been honest with her about exactly who he was. Their relationship hadn’t been healthy from the start, and looking back she realized he’d never actuallysaidthey were exclusive, but she’d jumped head-first into loving him because she was desperate. It had felt like her chance to finally have someone who was willing to share themselves with her and she couldn’t stomach passing it up.
Even when Clementine expressed her concerns. Even when the red flags popped up again and again. Even when her own instincts screamed for her to cut him off before he broke her heart.
For all that it had felt like the end of her world, their breakup was unremarkable. He’d been caught, didn’t care, and moved on as soon as she ended things. An ignominious conclusion to a painfully average barely-there-relationship.
So while she got a vicious sort of pleasure out of seeing Clark’s fierce expression, she didn’t allow herself to linger in that feeling. Lance didn’t deserve more than a moment of her time or energy these days.
“I’m okay,” she assured Clark. It was a reminder to herself, too. Shewasokay. She survived the heartbreak and moved on. “It was bad, but after that I focused on work. I got through the last leg of my training and then when this post opened up, I took it. Everything worked out.”
Mostly.As long as you didn’t count how miserably lonely she was, nor how gross she felt for being jealous of her sister, who had suffered so much more than her over the years.
Nelly had at least gotten the chance totryrelationships. Clementine never even had that before fate threw Emory in her path.
Or rather, before Emory crashed into her sister’s life like a ten foot long merman-shaped wrecking ball.
A soft quiet settled over the nest. Normally she would have begun to squirm, uncomfortable with being so vulnerable with a stranger, but she didn’t. It was hard to feel like she was being judged or pitied when a man stared at you like… well, she didn’t really know how to describe the look Clark was giving her, but it made her feel a tingly sort of warmth all over.
ChapterEleven
At length,he said, “Thank you for sharing that with me, Nelly. And for the record, you can touch me anytime. I’m an open book.”
She scraped her teeth over her bottom lip and looked away. He wasn’t the first to say he didn’t care if she saweverything,so she didn’t take his declaration seriously. “I figure you should know, considering…”
“I’m your mate?” He didn’t move, but she could have sworn he was a little bit closer.
