“I…” her voice failed her, but she owed him an explanation at the very least, didn’t she? “I’ve thought about it, I have. And I knew that you would have to go back to your home at some point.”
A slight wind rustled through her hair, making her shiver.
“I feel like if I went with you…I might not be able to leave,” she whispered, looking at him.
“You can leave whenever you wish,” he said carefully. “You know this.”
She shook her head, “That’s not what I meant. I meant that I would notwantto.”
He made a sound of frustration in the back of his throat, looking away, his gaze flitting across the steam rising above the hot springs.
“I do not understand you sometimes,” came his quiet rasp.
Crystal had come to the realization that she feltconsumedby him. She didn’t know when it had happened. She didn’t know when she’d started to fall in love with him. Perhaps at first sight even and that was why she’d fought against him so hard in the beginning…because she’drecognizedsomething in him.
But she’d also come to the realization that she’d felt this way before. Only, it had been in a much different way. She’d been young then, thinking she’d found her first love, thinking that all her fairytale dreams were finally coming true at the ripe age of seventeen. Only those dreams had turned into one nightmare after another and she’d turned her back on her family in the process. She’d lostyearsof time with them.
And she’d swore to herself to never let it happen again. She wasn’t that same young, naive girl who just wanted to be loved. She was older and much, much wiser. She didn’t have the luxury of falling head over heels in love, not when she knew the consequences of that kind of love.
And Cruxan?
She could fall head over heels for him.Easily…if she wasn’t already.
That scared her.
“My sister is pregnant. I don’t know if I told you that,” she said softly. “I’ll have a niece soon. A niece that I want to at leastmeetone day, whose life I want to be involved in. Because she’s my blood. Mysisteris my blood and the only family I have left. She helped me when I was at my weakest point because she loved me more than her disappointment in me. And I can’t…” Tears spilled over her cheeks, her voice going a little wobbly. “I can’t turn my back on her for a second time. I don’t get to love you, I don’t get to have youandhave my family. I always had to choose.”
Cruxan’s jaw clenched and he finally turned those blue eyes back onto her. And she stared into them like it was the last time she would see them, already feeling like her heart was shattering into a million pieces, now that it was left unguarded by the walls he’d torn down.
“If I went with you toOtala, I would not want to leave you,” she whispered, her vision going blurry with her tears. “Cruxan, I’m sorry.”
He didn’t say anything. They sat in silence—sad and tense, yet somehow peaceful—for a long time and she sat, shivering, waiting for him to speak, to sayanythingat all.
Finally, he broke that silence, but only to say, “We should go back before it gets any colder.”
“That’s all you have to say?” she whispered.
“I do not know what you want me to say, Crystal,” he rasped, looking at her, seemingly at a loss for words. “You have made your decision. That much is clear to me. I think I knew it all along, but I had hoped—” He cut himself off with a harsh exhale. Quietly, he finished, “I had hoped you would change your mind. That the last few spans would change your mind.”
Crystal wiped her cheeks, feeling her tears on the back on her hand.
“I cannot fault you for choosing your family, female,” he said quietly…but the soft anguish in his voice almost broke her.
“Will you hate me for it?” she whispered. Because she selfishly didn’t know if she could bear that, even after she’d just broken both of them.
“Nix,” he murmured quietly. “I could never hate you.”
And that knowledge made her want to cry even more.
“Come,” he said, standing from the fur blanket, before dressing. He never quite met her eyes. “Let us return toKroratax.”
“Okay,” she whispered.
When Cruxan guidedthe hovercraft down in front of his dwelling, his heart ached in his chest because he knew what would come next.
He just didn’t want to believe it.
He helped Crystal off before jumping down and then they stood in front of one another for a little while, without saying a single word. It hurt to look at her. It physically hurt.
