“There’s such a thing astoomuchcontrol. The fire took something from you that night. You don’t think that you’ll ever have a partner or a companion. You think no one will want you.” Fuck, I need to shut up. Just because Shadow doesn’t bother with a filter, doesn’t mean I should blurt every single thought that pops into my head.
He doesn’t soften, even though I sag against the door.
How is this supposed to help him?
“I’m not lonely,” he states flatly, but by the way he arranges his features like he’s never felt a single emotion in his life, I know he’s lying. “I have my club brothers. Even if I didn’t, you don’t have to sacrifice yourself, especially not with the idea that it might grow into more. Mercy kissing? Touching? Hard pass. To want to be loved, you’d have to have a heart.”
Holy fuck. There’s only so much of that I can unpack at one time. It’s hard to ignore the first part, but I latch onto the last. “Whoever made you believe that should be shot. There’s nothing wrong with you.”
“I’ve made my peace with not offering forgiveness to the people who don’t deserve it. You just move on. Get on with it.Shut those doors and keep them shut because they’re not worth opening. It’s not avoidance or survival. The best way forward is to not keep looking back like a dumbass.”
He stalks his way across the kitchen, coming at me with the force of a hurricane at his back, but I’m afraid. He’s not going to hurt me. He wants to leave, to take all that hurt and wild energy with him out into the night.
He’s like a wounded animal with his paw in the trap. He needs to free himself and go away to lick his wounds in private.
And I need to be strong enough to let him do that.
If I’d listened to my dad, maybe he wouldn’t have to. Maybe he wouldn’t be hurting right now. I owe him yet another apology that he doesn’t want to hear. A thousand words are stuck in my throat, scalding the back of my tongue, weighing heavy on my broken heart, but I can’t say any of them. I need to let Shadow go.
Not forever.
I have no intention of staying away. Not when he clearly,clearlyneeds a friend. Someone different than the ones he has already. I’m not vain or delusional, but I do believe in the connection we share. It’s not going to be so easily broken.
I step aside, pivoting out of Shadow’s way so he can jerk the door open.
He inhales immediately, gulping in the night, though it’s not much cooler outside than it is in the kitchen. It’s fresh air. Freedom. He can run from me, and he can run from his thoughts and whatever emotions and memories he’s been trying so desperately not to feel. He can leave his ghosts behind or lock them back carefully away the minute he steps out the door.
He doesn’t step.
Heburstsoutside.
His boots clatter down the metal stairs and then he’s striding down the alley, fleeing like all the devils and hounds of a hell he doesn’t believe in, are about to leap onto his back and savage him.
Or like he’s been carrying the weight of them all this time.
And fuck.
I shut my eyes for a whole fucking moment. I make myself take that time. I talk myself down. Count it out. Breathe.
It doesn’t help.
Fuck me for doing it, but I can’t just let him go like this.
Chapter 7
Shadow
Iguess I should have figured that our meeting could only go a certain way when I showed up dressed for battle and called our time a clown show before it even started.
Not only was it not nice, I can’t even call it an asshole move. Childish, more like. Or desperately scared.
The truth is we all want to be loved. Fawnie wasn’t trying to take my number down when she said it. It’s a fairly well-known truth, or at least a truth that a fuckton of people like to spout in all sorts of nonsense ways.
But when she turned her huge blue eyes on me, full of nothing but honesty and gentleness, the ache that I’ve been trying to shove off for years came roaring up over me and settled in my bones. It attacked me like a hungry wolf, gnawing at me until there was nothing left but dust.
I stopped believing I could have a future, normal or otherwise. I’ve been existing—and barely doing that at the best of times.
I don’t want hope.
