Page 60 of Rune’s Solace

“Thank you.”

“I’m serious.” The smile left him. “You weren’t afraid of him. You’re afraid of doing that again.”

My fingers stopped on the cup.

Sawyer saw it.

“Oh,” he said softly. “That’s it.”

“Don’t.”

“That’s actually it.” He sat back, looking almost sad now. “You’re not scared he’s going to hurt you. You’re allowed to want him, Ames.”

I looked at him.

He shrugged, but it wasn’t his normal shrug. “That’s all I’m saying. You’re allowed. Even if it goes bad. Even if somebody doesn’t understand. Even if every person on this damn earth has opinions about it.” His eyes dropped to his coffee. “Wanting to have sex isn’t something you should have to apologize for.”

“It IS about — I can’t sleep without him, Sawyer, it’s not — ”

“I KNOW you can’t sleep without him! That’s the most romantic and alarming thing I’ve ever heard and you’re saying it like it’s a symptom!” He sat back. “You realize most people would kill for the thing you’re describing as a problem? There is a man who makes the nightmares stop. That’s — Amy, people write songs. People write entire genres of song.”

I laughed, and it came out wet.

“I hate him,” I said. It sounded thin even to me.

“No, you don’t.” Gentle now. “You hated him. Past tense. I was there for the hating, I got texts, it was an entire era, I have receipts. This isn’t that.” He looked at me. “This is you being scared. Which is different, and which I understand better than anybody you will ever meet.”

And it was the truth, the thing under Sawyer, the thing that made the coffee shop go silent even though nobody else could hear it. Because he did understand. He’s spent his life wanting something he’s been told he’s not allowed to have, hiding it under a fake girlfriend and an easy laugh, watching other people get to just reach out and take it.

He wasn’t going to let me do the thing to myself that the world has spent his entire life doing to him.

“Can I tell you what I think?” he said. “As your fake boyfriend, a position that gives me unique standing here?”

“You’re going to anyway.”

He smiled, but it didn’t quite get all the way there. “One of us should get to have it, Ames.”

And that one hurt.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

IT TOOK ME days to work up to it, and in the end the walk down the path wasn’t the hard part at all. The hard part was leaving the lamp on.

Six nights I’d gone down there and done it the coward’s way, waited till I thought he was asleep, slipped in against his back, took what I needed in the dark where nobody could see me want it. Six nights he’d let me, and held still, and never once let on. I knew he was awake every time.

Sawyer’s voice had been in my head for days. Go be that girl again. Go reach.

So on the fifth night I knocked.

I’d never knocked before. That was the first thing that told him something was different. I heard him go still on the other side of the door, and then he opened it, and he took one look at my face and whatever he saw there made his own go careful in a way I’d never seen.

“Amy?”

“Can I come in?”

“You don’t have to ask me that. You never have to — ”

“I’m asking anyway.” My heart was going so hard I thought he could probably see it. “Tonight I’m asking.”