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“Can I come in?” I asked when she didn’t make a move to invite me.
She hesitated a moment before she stepped aside to let me in.
I stopped next to her when I walked through the door and planted a kiss on her lips. She was stiff for a moment before she melted against me, our bodies pressed against each other where they belonged.
Still, when I pulled away, her eyes were guarded. Something strange clung to her, too. Magic of some kind, but I couldn’t tell what it was.
What was going on?
“Would you like something to drink?” Oaklee asked, turning away from me.
“Water’s fine,” I said.
“I can make coffee; it’s no trouble.”
“I just had a cup.”
She opened the fridge. She was cheerful, but it seemed a little forced. I tried to pry deeper through our bond, to find out what else she felt besides the rush of warmth that came from two fated mates being together, but she kept me at arm’s length. Through our bond, she would only let me feel what she wanted me to feel.
It was almost like a part of her was covered with something.Veiled, for lack of a better way to explain it.
“Is everything okay?” I asked while Oaklee moved around the small kitchen, pouring water from the fridge into two glasses.
“Perfectly fine,” she said.
I didn’t believe her. What was she hiding from me?
When she came to me, we sat down on the couch together, and she leaned against me. Her small body fit perfectly under my arm. She’d been made to fit against me like a puzzle piece—my other half—and when we were together like this, we were both whole.
When I was with Oaklee, I felt like I’d been underwater my whole life, drowning, and now I could finally break through the surface and breathe. I hadn’t realized how desperately I’d needed to breathe her air until now.
“How are you?” she asked me. “Areyouokay?”
“I’m fine,” I said. “Overworked, but that’s my own fault. Icantake time off, but I don’t want to.”
Oaklee cupped my cheek, her touch saying what words couldn’t. She was here for me. Now that she knew my story, she understood me on a different level. Something was comfortable and peaceful about someone knowing what I was going through so that I didn’t have to wear a mask, and I didn’t have to try to explain what I felt.
“It’s not wrong to need some time off, you know,” Oaklee said.
“No, I guess it’s not. I just don’t like it when my mind has free reign. It always goes to dark places.”
“I know what that’s like,” Oaklee said.
“Yeah?”
Oaklee furrowed her brow, going back to a different place. “I lost my mom when I was fifteen. It had just been me and her against the world, so losing her was tough. To make things worse, I had to go live with my dad in Montana, and he…” She swallowed hard, and I felt panic grip her throat. “We didn’t get along.” She was downplaying whatever it was she relived when she told me about it. “It’s tough to deal with loss when you’re also trying to survive.”
I could relate to that on so many levels.
“Didn’t your dad help you through it?”
Oaklee snorted. “Sure. He helped me through it by using the money I’d inherited for himself.”
“What a dick,” I said darkly.
“Yeah, he was.”
“Was?” I asked.
