Page 91 of Heat Lightning

Shaking his head harder, he refused to look at me. “You wouldn’t be glad when I came home and stained our shower red with someone else’s blood.”

“Don’t presume to know how I’d feel,” I said, baring my teeth.

His eyes flashed in challenge. “Alright, how about if I told you we needed to leave everyone we knew and loved behind to reinvent our lives because the cops—or someone worse—caught up to me? What if that happened a second time? Or a third? What about then?”

“I still don’t think⁠—”

“What if you ended up in trouble because of me? Used as bait or collateral?” His hands dug into my sides, eyes going a bit wild. “I’ll do everything in my power to protect you, but there will always be things out of my control, Max.”

I blushed. Logically, I knew that, but he seemed larger than any problem I could ever have. “It’s not for you to judge how I’d feel. I know my own mind and can make my own decisions.”

“What if I really did give you children?” he whispered, his bloodshot eyes glistening with unshed tears. “And we had family picnics together and ate ice cream and danced with the lightning bugs. What if we loved them and cherished them, until one day someone showed up on our doorstep and hurt them? What if someone took them away from us to punish me for something I did? Would a life with me, a family with me, be worth it, then?”

I froze, stunned. Caught between my desperate desire for the life he painted to be true and the pain of losing it, I couldn’t answer.

His eyes shuttered, not giving me a chance to process. “No. It wouldn’t. And I would never forgive myself for dragging you into it. You might not be theoretically opposed to bad people not existing on this earth anymore, but the second you see the harsh reality of the job, you’ll decide differently.”

The distance between us grew further, almost like he stood on one side of a rift in the earth, and I was on the other.

Fire roared in my veins, and I reached across that widening gap. “So that’s decided, then? Just like that? Our hypothetical, nonexistent children might be in danger someday, so we don’t even get a chance to see if this could be more?”

He huffed. “Obviously, that’s just one outcome. But the danger you would be in, whether we were together for two weeks or a lifetime, is not hypothetical. It’s very real.”

Slipping. He was slipping out of my fingers. I’d fall into the pit below if he didn’t hold on tight.

“So then, what? You fuck me one more time and leave? You can’t actually believe that’s going to work. Look at you. You’re falling apart.”

He looked away. “The rejection will work. It has to.”

I couldn’t help my tears. I’d delayed this confrontation for as long as I could, hoping for… something. I wasn’t sure what. Maybe that he’d change his mind and decide he wanted to keep the bond after all? Maybe that he’d give us a chance to see what we could make of it?

Except, when had I decided that was what I wanted?

When he put his hands on my belly, and I wished there was something even more permanent tying us together. When he kissed me and told me I was the only one he wanted. When he followed me to the heat teacher’s office and broke in to fix my wall and carried me from that horrible, pulsing room, covered in the gore of the people who hurt me while holding me like I was the most cherished thing on Earth. When he⁠—

I shook my head. Once he came back into my life, letting go was never an option. “What if I d-don’t want it to work?” I asked, wiping away my tears as fast as they fell.

He squeezed his eyes shut like the sight of me crying caused him physical pain. “Max. This isn’t the time to discuss completing a bond. We’re at the end of your heat. You’re vulnerable and not in the right frame of mind. Even if we met normally, we would wait⁠—”

“But we didn’t meet normally,” I said, gripping his shirt. It had sea turtles on it. “We met how we met, and we can’t change that. I wouldn’t change⁠—”

“I would,” he snarled, gripping my shoulders tightly, defeated eyes darting between mine. “I would go back in time and cut Joseph Weber’s throat that first night in the alley, before you ever stepped out that door and consumed my life.”

It would’ve stung less if he’d slapped me. I tried to jerk away, but he held fast. “Because if I’d done that…” he whispered, wiping my tears with his thumb. “He would’ve never hurt you, and you’d be the kind of chef you want to be by now, instead of choosing something safe over your real dreams.”

“And w-what about y-you?” I asked, wiping snot from my nose. “You d-deserve someone t-too. You p-protect everyone else, b-but who protects you?”

“I don’t need⁠—”

“Yes you do!” I cried. “You do. You can’t f-fix everything for everyone else all the time. And that’s okay.” I reached for him again, clinging on. “I can help. I’ll carry things with you, so you’re not⁠—”

“Don’t,” he said, shaking his head.

“Atlas—”

“Don’t. I don’t deserve that from you. Not when—when⁠—”

“Whatever it is, you can tell me. I’ll still lo⁠—”