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There he became something even less human, a golem that lived in a garbage truck and mumbled incoherently to himself all day long. He could see all of it: the walls of his dingy refuge, the way the lamp light would flicker on the metal rivets that kept the creaking thing together. After a while, he couldn't even detect the stink. It clung to him, seeped into his pores, and kept others away. The whispers about him in town reached his ears, how he was twisted in the head, damaged beyond repair, a crazed beast, dangerous and unpredictable. Maybe he was, maybe he wasn't, but he could never know for sure. He doubted himself, and that was the worst prison of all.
After a particularly bad run-in with a drug dealing gang member where he almost died, he decided he'd had enough. He endured the long and extensive withdrawal and the months and years of cravings it took to break free. But, even then, when his mind had mostly cleared, the paranoia remained. He'd jump at every shadow, always on edge, even in his safe place, and he stayed filthy in his garbage truck simply to feel safe and keep others away. The grating metal screamed every time he opened the gate, its giant maw yawning open like the beast of his past come to take him. How many times had he wished it would simply chew him up and be done with it?
"Jake? Jake?"
His name trickled through the haze, and he jerked to sitting, clumsily heaving himself back to wedge his spine into the corner where the bed met the wall. Heart thundering, he scanned the room, eyes seeing nothing as his palm opened and closed on emptiness. Not his dagger, not a stick, nothing. He was weaponless. Who was it? Who was coming? What had he done?
"Jake!"
On some level, his brain understood the voice was two things: female and afraid. Brain whirling, her face came into focus. Big eyes, pointed chin, freckles, and more freckles.
Zorah. Naked, sitting on her knees, she stretched out a trembling hand, hesitation and fear holding her back from making contact with his body. Smart girl. She was right not to touch him.
No one should touch him.
"Hey." Zorah waved her hand instead, drawing his attention to her worried face, and he hated himself all over again for putting that concern there, for tainting her with his darkness.
His chest hollowed like someone shot a cannonball through it. He must've fallen into it again, like he'd done that night under the dock, like he'd done the night he'd taken Kess.
"Hey," she repeated, softer this time. "You're all right. You're here now, not there."
Jake dug the heels of his palms into his eye sockets and shook. He looked up at her, the bleakness contaminating him all the way down to his bones. After all the things he'd done, all the ways he'd abused himself and others, how could he even defile her with his filthy hands? He was nothing, worse than nothing. Damaged. Hopeless. Worthless.
Carefully, holding his eye contact, she lowered her hand onto his bare knee. The gentle pressure imbued with so much consideration and kindness, he would have cried if his tears hadn't long ago run dry.
She held his eyes with her own. "You're not there anymore. You're here, with me, and I need you. I need you to stay with me, Jake." Her fingers flexed, firming their hold on him, repeating the message her words delivered. "Stay with me."
Three simple words.Stay with me.
"I didn't mean to hurt her." He dropped his eyes to his lap. "Kess. I don't know what you've heard, but it was an accident. I didn't want to hurt her," he said again, reiterating the most important point. "I thought that if she was there, the Brethren would also be there, that they'd come for us, that they'd take her again."
Zorah nodded sagely. "That's the past. You're here now, and I need you. Here."
Jake laid his shaky hand over hers, carefully squeezing in acquiescence to her plea. Breaths sawed in and out of his lungs. He ran the pad of his index finger along the bumps of her knuckles, and his skin remembered kindness and tenderness. Remembered that he knew how to caress a woman until she dissolved into pleasure. Remembered the good things in the world, like Zorah's silken thighs draped over his own and her breathy little pleas against his ear.
She needs you. Your mate needs you.
He could stay. In good conscience, he could never be her mate. It would never work out for either of them, and she deserved so much more. But for here and now, he would stay.
What other choice did he have? For her, he would resurrect his humanity imprisoned under a century of debris.
CHAPTER 27
Zorah
"Jake." Her voice barely above a murmur, Zorah broke the drowsy silence before she chickened out. Not moving a single other muscle, she held her breath. Anxiety sat like a loaf of hardened bread in her stomach, spawning a never-ending series of unanswerable questions like mold on its stale crust.
The relentless drip-drip-drip of rain and runoff needled her.
Tell. Him. Tell. Him. Tell Him.
She had to tell him. Shehadto... but did it have to be now?
She blamed the darkness. Its ashy shadows had lured her into a confessional mood. Somewhere along the line, nighttime had become their time. They'd stitched together stolen moments under the ever-watchful stars into the weirdest relationship she'd ever had.
"Hmm?" Jake's arm, draped heavily across her chest, shifted to give her a small, affectionate squeeze that nearly brought tears to her eyes.
They rested in what she'd discovered was Jake's favorite postcoital position: his back propped against the wall with her lounging between his legs, resting against his body like he was a living, breathing, orgasm-providing chair. Inevitably, when her Heat episodes abated, he'd casually reassemble them into this position and then hold her for hours on end and purr softly as she dozed. Sometimes, she believed, he even snoozed himself, although that was always hard to discern as whenever she awoke, he always seemed to be waiting. She wondered if he truly enjoyed the position, or if he offered it as consolation for depriving her of his knot, welding their bodies together even without the physical tether. Nonetheless, it was rather nice; and she was about to destroy it all.
