AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She’d been a coward, hiding behind the wall she’d started building when she was a little girl, each brick carefully laid, a barrier against the kind of pain she’d seen her mother suffer time and again, a hedge against ever giving herself fully to someone, a self-fulfilling prophecy that would guarantee no one ever got close enough to really know and loveher.
Except Ronan had gotten close enough. He did know and love her, and somehow his love had made cracks in her preciouswall.
“Julia!”
She turned toward the sound of his voice and saw him making his way toward her in thedark.
“Hey,” he said when he caught up. He placed his hands on her shoulders. “Youokay?”
“I’m sorry. I just… I needed towalk.”
“Don’t be sorry.” He took her hand. “Wantcompany?”
She nodded and they continued along the beach. The surf rolled over Julia’s feet, the water warm on herskin.
“I feel bad,” she confessed. “Abouttomorrow.”
“What do youmean?”
“Just… everyone risking their lives, their freedom, for me, forElise.”
“It’s our choice,” Ronan said. “And it’s what we do, all ofus.”
She didn’t know the details of Braden and Nora’s work with Locke Montgomery, but she’d gathered that they worked with similar goals as MIS using very differentmethods.
“I know, but I can’t help feelingresponsible.”
He stopped walking and took her face in his hands. His eyes were dark and unreadable as he looked down ather.
“Don’t,” he said. “With or without you and Elise, none of us would be able to leave this alone now that we know aboutManifest.”
“I keep wanting to say thank you, but thank you seems so small,” sheconfessed.
She was surprised to see something like anger flash across his features. He stepped away, running his hands through hishair.
“What is it?” she asked. “What did Isay?”
He turned to face her. “You don’t have to thank me, Julia. Thanks is for a casserole someone brings over when you have a death in the family, for a ride from a friend when your car’s brokendown.”
She turned her hands toward the sky. “I don’t know what else tosay.”
He walked toward her, his eyes blazing, stopping when he was so close she could feel the heat of his body. “Don’t say anything. You’re my family, Julia. I’d do anything for you. Don’t you knowthat?”
She swallowed around the lump in her throat. “Ido.”
“Then why are you so determined to hold yourself apart fromme?”
She opened her mouth to deny it, then thought better of it. Ronan didn’t deservelies.
“I don’t know,” she said quietly. “I guess I’mscared.”
“Ofme?”
She shook her head. “Ofmyself.”
He reached down and tucked a piece of windblown hair behind her ear. “Help meunderstand.”
“I’ve never seen two people love each other in a way that was anything other than toxic.” She’d been young when her grandmother died, too young to view her marriage to Julia’s gramps through the lens of adulthood. “I’ve never seen a woman love a man without losingherself.”
