“I mean, leave your job and train with me,” Bryn corrected.
“With you?” Ethan asked, surprised.
“Yes. The college would be a waste for you. They would throw you in with the children and make you start from the beginning. I’ll cover all of that with you in a day. Then we can get to the interesting stuff. Come and stay for a couple of weeks and then decide.”
God. It was an amazing offer, but he had a job, a flat, responsibilities…. “Uh, that’s difficult….”
“It really isn’t. Make a decision and then do it. Sometimes, you simply have to trust.”
“Simply trust?” Ethan repeated softly. It sounded so easy, but it was the hardest thing in the world.
Elizabeth patted his shoulder. “You should think about it very carefully,” she said quietly. “In all the years that I’ve known Bryn, he has never offered to train anyone personally before. You won’t get this opportunity again.”
Ethan blinked, trying to clear his thoughts. “I’m not sure. I have commitments—”
Elizabeth waved her hand as if batting his commitments away. “Sometimes you get a chance to take a new direction…. Maybe this is yours?” She gave him a knowing look. “And you’d be close to Kayleigh.”
ChapterTwenty-Six
Threadsof confused panic clawed at her. Her limbs were weighted down, her mind foggy, and she drew frantically on her Shadows. There had been a massive blast… darkness… Ethan calling her name, far, far away. And then nothing.
The familiar surroundings slowly penetrated her confusion. The slow ticking of her clock, a chink of light shining through the curtains, the distant bleating of sheep—everything familiar and safe—but her mind was still primed from the battle it felt like she had only just left.
She pushed her aching body upright to lean against the headboard, letting go of her Shadows. Ethan was sitting in a chair next to her bed, slumped forward, asleep on his arms. He shifted as Kay moved, stirring.
Part of her wanted to hold on to the moment, the quiet peace of having him nearby. But she couldn’t forget the things he’d said, or the look on his face when he’d admitted that he didn’t trust her.
Ethan opened his eyes, blinking, and looked up at her for a second before launching up to wrap his arms around her. “Oh my God, Kay. You don’t know how terrified we were. I thought…. God. We thought….” He swallowed. “You’re here. You’re safe.”
He was warm, his masculine scent so familiar as it surrounded her, his arms gripping her with such certainty that she almost relaxed into him. Almost. But the last thing she remembered was losing both Ethan and James, and probably the Circle and her role as a Guardian too, then being dragged into a catastrophe and launching herself into a battle with a storm of Shadows. Somewhere inside her, she was still in that storm. A fermenting chaos that was part anguished grief, part betrayal, and part righteous anger.
She stiffened, pulling back, and Ethan stood slowly, letting his arms fall to his sides. God. It was so cold without him.
“I’m sorry,” Ethan murmured.
He was. She could feel the sincerity pouring out of him in waves, his Shadows tentatively reaching toward hers. But he had also said that he felt the same things she did… and then he had believed James, even though she’d begged him to listen.
If there was one thing Kay needed, it was to be seen—wanted—for who she was. Her parents had looked at her and seen their own fears. And Ethan had looked at her and seen Amanda. None of them had seenher.
She pulled the covers up all the way to her chin. “How did I get here?”
Ethan sank back down into the chair and told her, in rough sentences, what had happened. His face was drawn, beard untrimmed, his hair flat on one side and disheveled on the other. He looked like he had aged ten years overnight, but underlying his misery, there was a new peace to him, a sense of calm that she hadn’t felt in him before.
It made her want to lean forward, sink into him, beg him to hold her, to share some of that certainty. But she couldn’t let herself do it. Asking for love from someone who didn’t—couldn’t—really see her would always end badly.
He finished speaking and reached out a hand to touch her face, but Kay pulled back, just a fraction, and he dropped it again, hurt and regret flickering across his face before he looked away.
Ethan’s hurt somehow wounded her too. It felt like a blunt knife that gouged at the mess where her heart had been, and she froze, unable to move in any direction. It was too much. This aching struggle between her need to sink into him and her need to get away from him. This broken vulnerability at knowing the full depth of exactly how much he could hurt her. The pain and guilt of hurting him in return.
She crossed her arms over her chest and blinked against the rough sting in her eyes. This wasn’t her. She’d been fifteen when she decided that she would rather fight than wallow in her pain, and that hadn’t changed. “I think I’d like to be alone.”
“Kay, please….” He watched her, brown eyes deep with sorrow. “I completely fucked up; I know that. Everything I said was… awful. And I know it wasn’t true. I’m so sorry.”
Now he knew. Now. When he’d already ripped her heart from her chest and left it bleeding out on the floor.
I need you to go…. I want to trust you, but…. all I want is for you to go….How could she possibly risk that again?
She lifted a hand to her mouth, her fingers shaking against her lips as she swallowed. “When I asked you to listen to me, you wouldn’t.” Her voice rasped, but she forced the words out. “You believed the worst of me.”
