“I don’t want to talk about this with you.” Miranda tries to pull away from me, but my hand goes around her waist, and I hold her in place.
Cold water sloshes around us as I move. “No. You’re not running away. Ethan needs you, Miranda. I—What I said, I was wrong, okay? I was wrong, and I shouldn’t have tried to push you away. I made a mistake, Miranda. That’s all. I didn’t know you’d lost your job at the hospital.”
Her eyes turn away at that sentence.
“If I had known, I wouldn’t have done or said anything that I did. I would’ve made sure you felt safe in my home.”
Her lower lip is trembling, and she refuses to look at me.
It kills me that she’s trying to keep herself away from me, even now.
“It won’t happen again. I’m sorry.”
“Let me go.” Her voice is small and so close to tears that my wolf whimpers in misery.
“Miranda,” I murmur.
“Let me go!” she suddenly cries out, pushing me back. I let myself fall, and her arms come to wrap around her stomach. Her eyes are filled with tears that she doesn’t allow to fall.
“You don’t—You’re no one to—” She can’t seem to get the words out, so I wait. She squeezes her eyes shut for a second, and when she opens them, the grief in them is raw enough to stop my breathing. “Why couldn’t you just stay gone? Like everyone else?”
“Because I can’t leave you alone,” I tell her, getting to my feet. I take her face in my hands.
The mate bond fires the moment my palms touch her jaw. It has been underneath everything for months, a low, continuous pull I have been locking doors against, and every single one of those doors comes open at once. My wolf slams forward in my chest with a force that nearly takes my footing in the water. She is mine. She has been mine since the night she looked at me in the hospital and told me she’d never heard of me, even if I didn’t know it. She’s mine even if I can’t have her.
“I don’t need you.” Her voice is unsteady as she meets my gaze, misery in those beautiful eyes.
“I know,” I murmur, gently pulling her closer.
“You’re a bastard.”
“You’re right.” I brush my lips against hers, helpless against her pain. “I’m a bastard.”
She doesn’t pull away, her lips moving against mine. “I hate you. I really hate you.”
“I know.” I kiss her tenderly.
Her hands stop pushing. Then they grip, curling into my shirt, and she kisses me back, and she’s crying while she does it. It comes off her in waves. I pull her in and wrap both arms around her.
She breaks against my chest.
Her face lowers to my shirt, and she cries hard. Hard, body-wracking sobs, the kind that have been locked up for a very long time in someone who does not allow herself to fall apart in front of anyone. Her shoulders heave, and I stand in the lake with the water at my waist and hold her. After a while, I put my chin on top of her head and just breathe.
How am I supposed to walk away from her?
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“I hate you,” she sobs into my chest.
“I know.”
She pulls an unsteady breath. “I really hate you.”
“I know.”
The water shifts around our legs. The trees on the bank are still. Each sob from this woman who has refused to let anything break her destroys me. I broke her. When she withstood everything else, I came along and wrecked her, and I will never forgive myself for that.
“Even if everyone else goes,” I tell her quietly, “I’m not going anywhere.”
