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“Why would I? I thought she was a form of poltergeist. She was angry, but I never thought anger could turn her so cold, could twist her that way. I certainly never knew she could bend purgatory like that.”
“Anger does that to a person,” I admitted. “It eats away at us, traps us where we are, keeps us from seeing we can move forward.”
He stared at me as if my words were unexpected. “You know, when I first met you, I never would have thought you to be wise.”
“Well, you did meet me when a hellhound was ready to eat me and after a rough couple days in hell. I wasn’t at my best.”
“Indeed.” I chose to ignore the way he didn’t deny the wholenot at my bestthing. “You now have time before you, Ms. Harlin. I wonder what you will do with it.”
I stared down at the hot cocoa, smiling as I finally had an answer. After spending my whole life trying to be something else, trying to twist and deny myself until I fit a mold I never would, I now knew my direction. “I have no fucking idea.”
He tilted his head, a line appearing between his eyes. “That sounds like a horrible answer.”
I shook my head. “It really isn’t. Maybe I’ll travel or maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll go back to insurance or train otters to rob banks or make oversized dildos to sell by the roadside, but no matter what it is I pick? I won’t do it because it’s safe or because I think I’m supposed to or because it’s normal and will make me fit in. Whatever I decide to do, no matter how stupid or crazy or weird, it’ll finally be exactly whatIwant, because I want to, and that’s something I never really thought I’d get.”
* * * *
Maybe we should take a break.
I reread my text message for the fiftieth time that day, hating it a little more each time I saw it.
I shouldn’t have pressed Send. I should have relegated it to the same place that drunk texts go—a pit in hell so deep that no amount of spelunking could reach it.
Instead, I’d sent it. Toallof them.
And no one had answered.
I missed Gran all the more in that moment. I wanted someone to talk to, someone who could grab me by the shoulders and shake some sense into me. I had four amazing, handsome, brave and absolutely frustrating men that I had no doubt I loved.
Not to mention the best sex I’d ever experienced in my life by a long shot.
Still, when we’d returned, when life had ground forward as if it hadn’t ever been different, my nerves had gotten the best of me.
Theyallhad lives of their own. They had paths they’d been on before I’d gotten on their radar and messed it all up.
Kase had a coven to deal with. Troy had a pack who were all the more interested in him now. Grant had a pissed-off guild, and Hunter…well he wasn’t even reallyfromthe living realm. They all had their own messes to clean up without me causing more trouble.
It wasn’t that I wanted to stop whatever we had. In fact, there was nothing I wanted more than to see them.
I just needed to give them that choice.
It was what I’d found from Lilith, what I’d really learned at the end of this whole mess. I had choices. I’d grown up believing I was trapped on some path that I couldn’t escape, that I was helpless against the whims of fate.
Instead, what I discovered was that I decided where I would go,whoI would be. Those things were mine and mine alone to shape.
And no matter how much I hated it, I had to give the men I loved the same choices.
They needed time to acclimate, to decide if being with me was what they really wanted. I was asking a lot from them, really. I’d shown that trouble followed me, and through this mess that I’d dragged them into, they’d all risked everything. It wasn’t the future any of them had planned on, so was it really the one they wanted?
I spent the day away from home. The house had been too quiet, too still. It felt like a mocking reminder of my life after that text, like the universe was giving me a lovely preview of my loneliness to come.
I wonder if that Elder One who collected cats can give me one to start my collection.
Eventually, I found myself back at the place I often went to think—across the street from the fire station where my mother had left me. I still recalled the last time I’d come, when Gran had shown up and sat beside me.
The place lacked the sadness from before. Maybe I really had learned something. I didn’t sit there angry at my mother, wondering what I’d done wrong that made me so unlovable.
Instead, I accepted that I was different, that I was unique, and she simply wasn’t equipped to handle it. She’d done what she could for me—the scars from the tattoos were the proof—but hating her did nothing. Wondering who she was and what had been the last straw didn’t change where I was, didn’t alter my life or who I was at all.
