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Even seeing his face doesn’t make my breathing go back to normal. I haul him to me, crushing him against my chest. “Why aren’t you in bed?”
“I was grabbing potatoes to cook you breakfast.”
“Never do that again.”
His hands gently rest on my back. “I’m okay.”
Finally, I can release the long breath that’s been suffocating me.
“I hate this,” I confess. I’m not sure why my mouth is moving without permission. “I hate having you here and knowing how easily you can find danger. I hate it all.”
Sasha pulls back, studying me. “You hate me being here?”
More than he knows. My anxiety has never been higher than the last few days, and you’d think with the threat gone, it’d be easier, but if anything, it’s made it worse. Now I have proof that everything I’ve been telling people was fact. That outsiders won’t stop coming here until they destroy everyone and everything. “It’s the worst thing I’ve ever done.” I feel like I’m tearing out my heart and handing it to him. I don’t do emotion. I don’t do pain. I definitely don’t make myself vulnerable by telling someone how I feel.
“Right.” He releases me completely and takes a step toward the kitchen. “Breakfast time.”
I slump into a chair, exhausted from no sleep and thrown by the way Sasha brushed aside what I said. He busies himself cooking, and the whole time, I’m questioning how someone who always pushes the hard conversations could walk away from that one.
Unless …
It’s not a conversation he wants to have because he doesn’t feel the same way.
I swear my heart fractures.
I know it was stupid to let myself feel something for him. In my defense, it didn’t start as much. Just the urge to protect him, the same urge I have for everyone in this town, but especially for the ones smaller and weaker than me.
And Sasha was small and weak.
Initially.
I know better now, and I’ll never underestimate him again, but what started as protection grew to grudging interest to wariness to curiosity to awe. And now it’s twisted into something so dark and painful I don’t have a name for it.
Something that burns whenever I think about the fact that Sasha might actually leave me.
Maybe I can kill the mechanic?
The sneaky voice laughs at me. I can’t kill anyone. I only wish I could.
Sasha sets breakfast in front of me, but before he can move away, I grab his hip. My eyes study his face, trying to find the usual softness, the sweetness that pours out of him in the most disgusting way, but it’s not there.
He’s smiling, but it’s not him.
“Eat. Then go sleep. You need it.”
I do what I’m told because it’s easier to face than my thoughts.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-EIGHT
SASHA
It takes a week. Gage wipes his hands off on his dusty jeans and turns toward where I’m standing with Wilde and Nixon, waving a hand over the car.
“Done.”
“That’s it?” I thought it would take longer, because after all this waiting, it’s like things are on fast-forward. I want to slow it down. Want to tell everyone to pause for a second so I can fucking think, but Wilde just takes the keys from Gage and drops them in my hand.
