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Something was wrong. Something different than what she’d feared and yet, when she told the Song to look, and it grudgingly obeyed, there was no magic wrapped around Numair that was not his own, nothing forcing him to act this way.
She closed the distance between them. “Look at me.” He didn’t. “Look at me. Look me in the eye and tell me you don’t want me here, and I’ll go.”
His eyes met hers. His lips parted but the words didn’t come out. He looked…wild. So she forced out words she didn’t want to say to this version of him, because they were words that made her vulnerable, words that cut to a deep uncertainty in her heart. But her Numair wasn’t here, and she didn’t know how else to bring him back. “Is this because of what happened? In the woods?”
She saw him. For a second, she saw him. And then he was gone again, a slow, half-smile tugging up the right corner of his lips. He leaned in. “Because of what happened,” he said mockingly. “Do you honestly believe a shadow of a kiss has me so confused that I’m running away from you?”
She took an involuntary step back.
“Don’t flatter yourself. Or are you so naive that you thought you were different from all the rest?” He advanced and she let him move her, until her back hit the wall and his hands pressed against the plaster to either side of her face, and he leaned in to whisper, “You’re just like all the rest. Wanting the same thing as all the rest because that’s what I’m good for, right?”
His voice dropped, low and seductive, and she wanted to punch him in the throat again. Wished she had when he said, “Do you want me to kiss you now? Do you want me to show you how good I can make you feel? To put my head between your legs and?—”
“Shut up.” She couldn’t breathe, yet she was breathing too fast. “This isn’t you.”
He drew back, until his face was in front of hers again. “Oh, this is exactly me. This is everything I am. Isn’t that why you’re really here? I have to admit, you chased me longer than most. Irritated you got cheated at the final step?”
“I don’t give a damn if you never kiss me again,” she said vehemently. “I’m here because I miss my friend. I miss my best friend. And right now I don’t see him even though I’m staring at him.”
He shook his head. “If I’m your best friend, you’re more pathetic than I am.”
She shoved him back, then, because she couldn’t stand to be this close to him when he was already so far away. Her hands flew without thought to the clasp of her necklace. She held it out, the matte black absorbing the sunlight, the soft gold reflecting it. He’d looked so unsure, so hopeful, when he’d given it to her. So careful when he’d fastened it around her neck. She didn’t know what it meant to him, but it meant something.
“Pathetic would be keeping this. So take it back.”
His eyes fastened on it. “No.”
“Why not?” Her voice was sickly sweet. “I’m just like all the rest, aren’t I? So give it to the next one that comes along.” She opened her hand, letting it fall.
He broke, lunging for it. His knees hit the floor as he caught the pendant, looking like she’d knocked the air from his lungs. “Take it back.”
She knelt in front of him. “Why?”
But he only shook his head. “I can’t.” Agony laced the perfect black of his eyes. “I can’t change for you. I told you that first night in my room I couldn’t change for you.”
“I never asked you to.”
“You ask all the time. You ask every day, every minute, just by existing.” His voice was hoarse. “And I’m a selfish prick for telling you that.”
Yes, he was. And the ground was broken and the bridges were nowhere in sight and he’d set all the rules on fire, so she asked the one question she was never supposed to ask him. “Why do you do this? You hate them. I see it in your face when you talk to them. You hate it when they touch you because I notice you flinch when they never notice. So why?”
He drew in a jagged breath, his eyes shining, and something in her broke. Something she hadn’t realized was whole enough to break. She reached for him and he reached back, and this time when they kissed it wasn’t soft, or hesitant, or a shadow.
It was her lips almost bruising his and him returning in kind. It was her hand curled into the fine silk of his hair and the small, surprised moan that came out of her throat when his tongue brushed hers, when his hand fisted in her shirt.
It was him pulling her onto his lap and her legs locking around his waist because she never wanted to let him go. It was the soft drowning of her mouth in his and the way she trusted him enough to close her eyes. It was the tears slipping down her cheeks when she did. It was the saltwater that coated her own hand when she cupped it to his face. It was the labored breathing when they finally broke apart, his forehead resting against hers, the wild thump thump thump of her heart insisting that this was what home meant.
Not a city or a house or a room, but him.
“Let me help you, Numair.”
Every line of him tensed and she knew she’d lost him. “You can’t.” His lips brushed her forehead, her nose, her mouth. He pressed the necklace into her palm, curled her fingers around it, then gently slid her off his lap. Then he stood and walked away. “Goodbye, Clare.”
She screamed. Still on her knees, the first tears she’d cried in a decade running down her cheeks, she screamed. It was a raw, ruthless sound and the Song screamed with her, rattling the walls, the floor, the ceiling.
Shaking the foundation of the house.
The chains holding the punching bag snapped and it fell, and Numair—he still wasn’t afraid of her. He just turned back, so much sadness in his eyes, and waited. For whatever she needed to say.
