Page 97 of Why Broken Wings Fray

So I headed towards Raegan’s room, hoping that he was in there, so that I could quickly say my five minutes worth and be on my way without him knowing.

~

I knocked on his door four times, each bash of my knuckles against the stone shaking the fragile bones in my hand. If I was to have a serious, somewhat useful conversation with Raegan, I would need to wind in the flushing temper that Rory had spurred within me.

“Come in,” Raegan’s voice called, though it was not any of his usual tones in that it was quiet and muffled.

Swallowing, I steeled my spine and tested my resolve, convinced that nothing could distract me from just how furious I was with Rory. At least until I opened the door, stepped into Raegan’s room, and shut it behind me. Because the moment I got a look at him, it all disappeared.

It was like looking at the Prince who once kneeled at the side of his dead father all over again. The hollowness of his cheeks and the shadows beneath his eyes drowned out all of his other features, though the downturn to his lips and the shape of his brows were enough to make me hesitate.

I knew broken and beaten all too well, but nothing compared to the sight of the King of Talamh where he sat on the edge of his bed, looking more than exhausted and fed-up, ailed in ways that only a king of a kingdom could look.

“Raegan?” I managed, my voice croaking as I feared my voice could shatter him once and for all.

And it did, in a way. He lifted his eyes to me, the bright greens of them dulled down into something dark and haunted.

“We need to talk about today. What happened, it was…”

The words died in my mouth as he blinked at me. Perhaps I was a fool, perhaps Raegan had truly learned how to manipulate me, but I couldn’t continue in my lecture as I looked at him.

“I know,” he whispered, his words hardly coming through at all. “I do not know how it… How it went so… Just so very…” He trailed off, his head shaking, his eyes slipping from mine and instead landing in his lap. “Whatever you have to say, please do not. I know it. I have said it, over and over, in the hours that have lapsed.”

The anger was still pulsing through me, though I suppose to him it looked like disappointment, because I wasn’t prepared for what he said next.

“Please, Olivia,” he whispered. “Just for one night, please. Do not look at me like that – like I am some great evil. I know what I am, what I have done. Is it possible for you to remain here, with me, without expectation? Without holding me to my responsibilities? Without needing from me as everyone needs from me?”

I blinked. All of my rage simmered away.

“Because if you cannot – if you cannot let it go for one night, if you cannot refrain from needing the King of Talamh for one night, please go.”

I forgot what I had come in here for as I stared at Raegan, at his unkempt appearance and the truth to his words. He looked as worn down and destroyed as he ever had. I realized, at last, why that was. Because the Raegan I was looking at had lost all of his masks. Or, he no longer had the energy to pick them up and place them on. Whatever it was, the Raegan staring at me, pleading with his eyes and so thoroughly heartbroken, was the real Raegan. Neither Prince nor King, fox nor cunning.

Just Raegan.

My Raegan.

That’s why I stepped towards him.

“You offered me a distraction, once. When I desperately needed it.”

His head lifted from where he had allowed it to hang against his chest. Everything to him was so lost beneath a haze, his eyes glassy and his smirk nowhere to be seen.

“Perhaps I can offer you the same?”

Please say yes.

The thought possessed me and I needed him like a flame needed oxygen. We were chaotic, catastrophic, and a disaster waiting to happen – but I was so fucking tired of refusing it.

“No,” he said, the hollows beneath his eyes never-ending.

Swallowing, I tried to accept his answer and nod, but Raegan wasn’t done.

“You are not just a distraction to me. Or, you are, in that you are the distraction, the very thing that I want to run into and away from it all. But I do not want you to offer yourself to me as some sort of plaything. You were never that. You will never be that.”

My body flared up with heat and confusion at the same time. It was everything I had so desperately wanted to hear from him, yet now that I had it, I didn’t know what to do with it.

So I was honest, utilizing my small and cracking voice. “I wish to run away from it all and into you, too.”