“No,” she whispered. “Not at all. I try to do the same too.”
She tried to make her mother proud every day…because she’d let her down before. Too many times. She had failed her, but Crystal was doing what she could to make up for it.
Cruxan went quiet, though his hand still stroked through her hair.
“We never talked about that night,” he reminded her.
She sighed, heavy and short.
“We need to,” he told her.
“What is there to say? It happened. I just thought you should know about it, considering…”
He made a sound in the back of his throat. “There is much to say.”
She remembered the way he’d left their camp shortly after she’d told him. She remembered feeling hurt, though Beks had told her that it was Cruxan’s own perceived helplessness in the situation that had caused him to pull away.
“This…” he started before his mouth tightened. “Heis a part of you.”
“I don’t want him to be anymore,” she whispered, panic fluttering in her belly.
“I wish I could take him away from you,” he told her gently. “I wish that more than anything,luxiva. I wish…” he broke off with a growl, his body tightening. “I wish I could do a lot more than that.”
The veiled fury in his voice told her exactly what he wished to do.
She thought that maybe Bekshadbeen right.
“Why did you leave?” she asked, wanting to know for certain. “After I’d told you?”
His brow furrowed.
“I was a little hurt by it,” she admitted quietly.
An anguished expression came over his features. He expressed his emotions so readily, so freely…something she envied and admired about him.
“Luxiva, I did not realize that,” he said. “I thought you would want time.Ineeded time too. I felt rage and grief and frustration. I did not think you needed to witness it, after what you had revealed to me.”
“I realize that now,” she said softly.
“I had never felt the need to do violence so powerfully before that moment,” he confessed to her. “It scared me, if I am being honest. I knew that violence was the last thing you needed.”
She appreciated his honesty, like always. Shewasbeginning to believe him when he’d told her he would never lie to her. She thought him incapable of it.
“I feared you thought differently of me,” she admitted. “I feared you thought I was pathetic or weak.”
He made a sound of protest in the back of his throat, his hand tightening in her hair.
“Never,” he growled. “I think that you were young. That you gave your soft heart to a male who did not deserve it and by then, it was too late.”
She blew out a shuddering sigh against his skin.
“You cared what I thought?” he asked softly next. “At that moment?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “I did.”
He dropped his forehead down until it touched her own. He did it so often that she wondered if it was an intimacy among Luxirians, if it was their version of a kiss or a hug.
Either way, it made her feel warm and safe. It made her belly flutter and she was done fighting against those feelings.
