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“You never need to sit here and think that Atticus will be mad at you if you don’t go. That he’d ever be mad at you for making a decision that puts you first,” Mal says. “You need to be selfish, Nora.”
“George said that to me too,” I say, looking out the window again.
“About the same thing?” Mal asks, and I shake my head.
“No.”
“You are one of the least selfish people I know,” Mal says. “I’m selfish. I don’t give a fuck about anybody except you. I put myself first all the time, and I have no shame in doing that. You need to start doing the same thing.”
“I hear you,” I reply. “That doesn’t make it any easier to do.”
“No,” Mal says, shaking his head. “It doesn’t.”
It’s silent again, but unlike when it happened before, a lot of the tension has faded. Now we’re just two people sitting together, lost in our thoughts.
“Are you going to try to kill yourself again?” he asks, completely out of the blue.
“I don’t know,” I reply.
“Well if you do, are you going to do it this week?” he asks, a hint of frustration in his words, and I know it’s stupid, I know it is, but I have to cover my mouth with my fist to try and hide my smile.
Would it be okay if I did decide to kill myself as long as it wasn’t this week?
Or is he trying to prepare how long he needs to be by my side for?
Because he might not have admitted it, but now that my shifter senses are back, I can smell that he sleeps in my room every night in his shifted form, and that he leaves just before I wake up. I’ve not mentioned it to him because I’m willing to let him have this, but that doesn’t mean I’ve not noticed.
“Would you do it this week?” he repeats.
“I don’t know,” I snap back, but where his came from him being annoyed, my snapping comes from me being confused. Lost, even. I don’t know my own mind. “I know that right now, I’m working hard on being alive, and I’d really like to continue being that way. I can’t say that it’s not going to change, though.”
He nods, clenching his jaw tightly.
“It’s hard,” Mal says. “It’s hard to sit here, knowing how badly you’re struggling, and knowing there’s nothing I can do about it.”
“I’m sorry,” I reply. “I wish I could undo our bond.”
Mal throws his feet down on the pedals, just stopping us in the middle of the road, and turns to me with fury radiating across his face as he kills the engine.
“You wish you could get rid of our bond?” he snarls, sounding more tiger than man right now. Within a flash, he undoes my seatbelt and tugs me into his lap, caging me in his arms, and I flinch at the ferocity in his light blue eyes.
“You wish you could take back me?” he snaps.
“Me?” he repeats, and this one is a broken statement compared to the anger that was within him a moment ago. My face falls, and I can feel the burning in my throat as tears prick my eyes. He’s devastated, and I hate that I didn’t think before speaking.
“No,” I whisper, cupping his cheeks, hoping he can see the truth in my gaze, feel the sincerity of my words. “That’s not what I meant. No, of course not.” I blink away the tears, shaking my head. How could he ever think that I don’t want him? “I love you.”
That dims some of the fire in his eyes, but it’s not enough to reassure him. I know it’s not. Shit. Why didn’t I think before speaking?
I push myself into him, cupping his cheeks and tug his head forward. He doesn’t move it, instead, holding my gaze with his stony eyes. It’s like there’s a challenge in them, demanding to know what I’m going to do next. So, I lift myself up and press my lips to his.
It starts off as a soft kiss where I’m trying to put all my emotion into it, to show him how much I love him, how much he means to me. I pour every single positive emotion into that kiss, but it’s just not enough to break through that anger, to break through the hurt that I’ve caused.
I press my hand into the nape of his neck and press into him as hard as I can, using my tongue, covering him with my scent as I rub my boobs onto him, trying to build that connection that I’ve denied him.
“I love you,” I whisper against his lips, and it’s like something snaps within him. He smashes his lips back into mine, biting and sucking my bottom lip, before exploring my mouth with his tongue.
He gives me every single part of him, using our kiss to work out our issues.
