“This isn’t a joke, Sable. It could have killed you.”
“You’re going to kill me again at this rate.” I hate this show of weakness. That a bedroom and nothingness could make me go insane.
Sleep isn’t cutting it anymore. I don’t know how much more time I can spend staring aimlessly out of the window. I need to do something other than sitting with my own head and pain.
I’m not fast enough to avoid Lynx when he reaches for my arm.
“There are alternatives, like tying you down, if you insist on acting like a brat.”
“I fucking hate this place. I’ve seen nothing but the same four walls for the pastfourdays. I’ve even counted how many strips of wallpaper they’ve used—forty-three—and have a running tally of every bug I’ve seen.” I try to hide the breathlessness from my voice and attempt to slap his hand away with no success. “I ambored, Lincoln.”
His expression turns into a scowl at the use of his real name. “Tough shit. You’re injured.”
“And I’m about to get a lot more injured in the brawl we’re about to have unless you get your hand off me.” I’m only partly lying to myself. I like it when he touches me.
If he does let go, I don’t have full faith in my legs to keep me stable since he’s bearing a lot of my weight.
The muscle in his jaw flickers. “Why do you always have to be so difficult?”
When Lynx speaks, it’s not his voice I hear. It’s my father, whenever I caused any kind of trouble. It’s my mother, whenever I so much as breathed too loud. It’s every person in my life who told me I was too much and not enough.
“No one told you to help me. I never asked,” I snap, yanking myself out of his grip. I can barely feel the pain that slices through me as my voice finds solid ground and the familiar, cold, empty rage takes over. “If I’m so fucking difficult, why don’t you let go so I can fall down the stairs and put us both out of our misery?”
I’ll stop being a problem for anyone that way.
The corners of Lynx’s eyes soften. It’s a fact that barely registers in my brain when he reaches for me again. “Sable, I?—”
“You know what? No, fuck you.” I shuffle back, pointing an accusatory finger at him as if he’s every person who let me down when I was a child. Somewhere deep down, I know his comment was made in banter. “I don’t even know why you’re here. I don’t need your help. Leave me the hell?—”
My rant cuts off when he abruptly sweeps me off my feet to hold me bridal style against his chest once more, topping it with a stern, “Stop talking, Sable.”
I gape at him and his lack of reaction to the bait because I wanted the argument—to scream like it might fix everything that happened. Instead, he’s carrying me down the hall as if my outburst never happened.
Like maybe he knows what I was after and sees all the skeletons I’m keeping in my closet, and doesn’t care that my sharp, broken edges are showing.
“What—”
“Keep moving your mouth and I’ll find a better use for it.”
My jaw drops further, and heat fills me from the inside out. I have whiplash from his ability to take control over my emotions so quickly.
“I’m injured.” It’s a stupid response.
“Then you know what you need to do.”
Yes. Shut up. That’s exactly what I do because I’m too dumbfounded to say anything else as he carries me to the opposite side of the manor and into another living area, where he kicks open the French doors into the balcony then carefully sets me down on the paved floor, a couple of feet from the railing.
He wordlessly takes a seat beside me and stares out at the lake and the forestry surrounding it.
The silence settles around us, with nothing but birdsong and the air to fill the space between us.
I watch him out the corner of my eye. The darkness paints the dip in his jaw and the hard lines around his eyes while the moonlight kisses his cheekbones and leaves the faintest glisten on his lips. He almost looks ethereal, like a creature touched by the moon instead of just molded by shadows.
My gaze shifts to the scenery I’ve seen a thousand times before, and as the seconds pass, the rage I’ve known my entire life recedes into the cave it’s always lived in. The deeper it gets, the easier it is to pull Lynx’s scent into my lungs and forget about the sharp ache of loneliness.
The cold air sends a shiver down my spine. Without so much as a word or a glance Lynx’s way, I’m back in his arms, being brought closer toward the exterior wall, which blocks the breeze. He encircles me, soaking me in his warmth, my back against his chest as he leans against the manor.
His arm is big enough to cover my own and act as a human blanket against the chill, but really, I’m already burning up. Heat tinges my cheeks, and the warmth unfurling beneath my ribs is making it hard to breathe.
