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The girl was all infectious laughter and adorable movements whenever she had that ridiculous country music station on. She was a light shining so damn bright with a subtle southern accent that let her fit into North Carolina better than I ever would. She’d known pain I had yet to uncover, but not this. Not the dark demons of our world. And I knew I’d die to protect her.
“Lexi’s teacher,” I finally confirmed, earning a hissed curse from Dare.
“It wasn’t easy. If you remember, I tried making her think I didn’t want her so she’d leave at one point,” Dare finally answered. “But Lily wasn’t afraid of me, even though she should’ve been. On top of that, we all thought she was trapped in a bad situation, and I knew I could protect her better than anyone.”
A hushed laugh climbed up my throat at the similarities.
“Sound familiar?”
“A little,” I admitted.
“A true civilian’s going to be different. She’ll have to be made aware of our life and brought into it slowly. Gently. On top of that, it’ll be dangerous for her because, if she decides to leave one day, she’ll know too much,” he said meaningfully. “You could always talk to Conor or Libby about how it was for them with their partners, but Maxon had known about us his entire life, and Sutton wasn’t even a civilian. She just hadn’t known what she’d been born and married into until we unveiled it all.
“But none of that matters,” he went on. “This girl of yours could be the daughter of our greatest enemy, or she could have no idea our world still exists. What matters is if your world exists without her.”
I went still as the past month and a half blasted through my mind, shouting the answer as I forced my mouth to remain shut.
“I’ve watched you go through women like it was a game for more than a dozen years. I’ve never seen you like this,” Dare said as he finally stood. “It’s okay to be worried about what can happen in the future. That’s normal for people who aren’t even in this life. But you should be afraid for your immediate future if you let yourself stay in this war because your head will always be invested in that.”
“That’s what I’m worried about,” I admitted. “Something happening to her, of course. But despite Einstein’s bullshit earlier, people rely on me having a clear head. On alerting everyone else to danger. On being the first one into danger. What if I get so distracted because I’m worried about her, that someone gets hurt?”
Understanding sounded in the back of Dare’s throat even as he slanted his head. “Yeah, that isn’t how it works.”
“That’s exactly how it works.”
“No, because she’ll be safe. You’ll have made sure of that,” he said without hesitation. “And then you’ll be hyper-focused because you’ll have no other choice than to protect her because every cell in your body will demand it.”
Pressing his hands against the table, he leaned forward and dropped his voice. “Protecting your partner? The person whose soul has attached to yours? That’s something that’s ingrained in you. It’s primal. And in protecting her, you’ll be protecting everyone else.” Tapping on the table, he stepped away and repeated, “End your battle.”
I didn’t respond.
I just sat there a while longer, thinking about what it would be like to let myself have that life I’d always been so against, only for those fears to build higher and higher despite Dare’s assurances.
If only ‘ending my battle’ were as easy as he made it seem. But I’d almost died the night I first entertained the possibility of settling down and having a family. And for as much as I didn’t let things affect me, there were some that stuck. Some that lingered.
That was one of them.
WILLOW
“And you’re sure you’re okay?” my mom asked for what had to be the sixth time that evening.
“Mom...”
“You sound...well, you know,” she said, her voice dropping to a whisper that was filled with worry.
I did know, only because so many of our conversations had begun and ended this way over the last year. In her defense and mine, her worrying over the way I even sounded had become almost nonexistent in the past couple of months.
Until tonight.
But the last thing I wanted to tell her was that I was seeing men in masks again.
I dropped the blinds and stepped away from the window, hating that I couldn’t shake the feeling that a person in a neon mask was waiting just outside.
Ridiculous.
“I just didn’t get much sleep last night,” I finally said.
Silence filled the call for a while before she asked, “Are you sure that’s all? You could always come back to Virginia. I’m sure the school—”
