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“Hurt me,” he begged her.
“Why?”
“Because I deserve it.”
Three years ago, she would have agreed with him. Three years ago, she would have hurt him back.
But not right now.
“Let me up,” she said. “Please.”
The fire in Hawthorn’s eyes didn’t recede, but slowly, his grip loosened. Juliana scooted into a sitting position as the fire simmered away.
Once again, she didn’t have the words.
But she wondered if perhaps she didn’t need words, not for this.
If her father had died, and she felt responsible, words wouldn’t matter. Words could not plug up that wound.
She inched forward on her knees, and wrapped her arms around him.
For a moment, his arms hung at his sides, as if he had no idea how to use them, so unaccustomed to the action of being held.
Gradually, they lifted up and circled around her back, with all the strength and ferocity of a kitten. He sobbed soundlessly into her shirt.
They said nothing. Juliana had the strangest notion that theywouldsay nothing, that this moment of paper grief would be hurled into the fire as soon as they let go, never to be spoken of again.
But not yet.
Not yet.
She did not know which scared her most: that there was a part of him that could still overpower her, a part that wanted to hurt her… or that he could hurt at all.
Hawthorndidn’trememberwhathappened next. His thoughts turned dark as Juliana disappeared, his vision narrowing on the swing of her tawny braid, a golden flame in the diminishing sunlight.
He would have preferred to see her face.
Mugginess dragged him down. Pain liquified. Someone or something was pulling at his limbs.
Darkness, in and out, like the ebb of a tide.
He swam in the sea once, dived under the surface, went deep, deep down.
Jules was there. There beside him. There to pull him back.
Where was she now?
Voices were all around him, low and rushed. A white face hovered in the doorway, numb, cold, far away.
Mother.
Must be bad.
Vines twisted overhead and light burned in his side, and people were still talking.
Not the right people. Not the right voices.
Jules.
