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She shifted, suddenly popping up to her feet, her voice cracking as she looked down at him. “I recall. I am hideous and naïve and you want nothing to do with me. You made that clear at your gaming hell.”
Her fingers lifted, pushing back the loose hair along the side of her head as she drew in a wicked breath that seemed to hold back a sob. “Just because you feel that way, doesn’t mean I feel the same about you, Strider. You are still my family. Still the only person left alive that I love. Still the boy that saved my life again and again that year when we were on our own. Still honorable and strong and good.”
Her palms lifted into the air. “So what if that’s naïve? So what if I still want to see all of that in you? It doesn’t hurt you in the slightest what I think of you. But you—you are determined to slice a blade into my chest with every word you utter at me. And I…I don’t know what…” Her voice trailed off as her shoulders lifted.
“Pen—” He stopped his own words as he instantly realized he couldn’t give her anything at this point. She was the furthest thing from hideous and she needed to know that. But she was so close to giving up any hope she had for him, and that had to happen. His tongue slipped between his teeth and he bit down.
She exhaled, her voice broken. “I don’t know…I don’t know what you are, what you want…and I’m tired.”
She turned slowly on her heel and moved past him, walking toward the rear door of the inn.
Silent, he watched her feet drag across the grass, her black dress fusing her to the darkness about her, her bare toes curling into the ground with each step.
Bare toes, just as she always liked when she was young. She’d never had any use for shoes.
She disappeared into the inn.
He resisted the urge to call out to her, to bring her back to him so he could argue with her.
For she was mistaken.
How she saw him. How she believed in him. It did hurt him.
It gutted him to the core.
Because he knew full well how very wrong about him she was. He was none of those things that his mother had hoped for him.
He inhaled a deep breath of cool air into his lungs. Air that sat, heavy in his chest, not moving.
Fight it though he was, the visceral instinct to protect her had reared the moment he had seen her in the Den of Diablo. Instinct that had refused to yield.
That left him with one thing.
He had to protect her from himself, his world—at all costs.
{ Chapter 8 }
Pen twirled the stem ofacorncocklebetween her forefinger and thumb, watching the feather-light petals dance as she tried to determine if the color was a purple or a deep pink.
The tips of boots shuffled into her view as she sat on the hillside.
“Do you remember how your mother used to make up stories about my mother?” She looked up to Strider’s face. The sunlight hit him from the side, turning the ends of his brown-black hair a lighter color—almost red with the orange hue of the setting sun. “How my mother was a princess who got onto the wrong ship and sailed to Belize? How the ship was almost lost in a storm. How she charmed everybody on board. I always loved that story.”
He gave a slight head shake. “Why do you remember these things?”
“Why do younotremember these things?”
“I don’t look back. I look ahead.”
She nodded, her look dropping back down to the flower as she gave it another twirl. Why did she ever expect him to say one thing to her without animosity lacing his words?
She wanted the Strider she once knew back. The one that was kind and would save kittens from the docks with her. The one that could fall into fits of giggles, laughing so hard he’d drop to the ground, holding his belly. The one that was fearless, that wouldn’t let any of the other teasing children even hint that she was an orphan. The one that knew to his bones she was his family.
Maybe he was right. Maybe they were nothing to one another now—acquaintances at best. Maybe she had to let the past dissolve into the nothingness he was convinced it was.
But she didn’t think she could do it—let the empty hollow of forgotten years seep into her chest. Part of her—the part of her that had held herself together all these years—would be destroyed if she gave up on who she had been—who Strider had been.
They had been family.
