Page 32 of The World Undone

“Max?” Declan’s voice was soft, quiet as she pulled the door closed behind her, the gentle snap enough to make me jump.

The deep black of her hair and shirt made the gentle concern in her glistening green eyes impossible to avoid. It was a look I was growing more and more familiar with.

Dec liked to project a chilly demeanor to the world, but she was the core of the group—the most in tune with each of our needs, the first one to notice when one of us wasn’t quite right.

At least she was that way with me. I swore she could read me like a goddamned book she’d memorized years ago and recited daily.

I took a deep breath, tried to pull my fear and anxiety back inside of myself, swallowed the lingering thoughts about my conversation with Evelyn, pulled the cyclical repetitions of Lucifer’s ritual back before they burned her.

Her eyes narrowed as she moved towards me, hesitant and slow like she was afraid of scaring off a timid animal.

“Are you okay?” She exhaled sharpy, shaking her head. “I mean, okay probably isn’t the word I’m looking for. Of course you’re not okay. Shit’s been abso-fucking-lutely wild lately. I’d be almost more concerned if you were okay. But—” she paused, searching for the right word, “You’ve just seemed a bit more off than usual the last few days. Distant, maybe? I know that what happened at Headquarters was a lot. I just want you to know that I’m here, okay? I love you. If you want to talk about any of it?—”

I opened my mouth to respond, but I had no words to give her.

Tell her. Just fucking tell her goddamn it.

It was so fucking easy.

Dec, you’re right. I’ve been distant because I love you too—I love all of you—and I’m terrified of letting myself get even a little bit closer because I’m going to die and the damage and pain my death will cause will only increase the closer I let you all in.

I wanted to let the words fall from my lips, but I couldn’t.

Worse, even, I wasn’t sure I could do it—that I could willingly leave them when the time came, knowing how much it would hurt them. Now that I intimately knew that kind of loss—felt the absence of Cy like a near-constant stab wound to the chest—being the cause of that kind of pain was my biggest fear. Even bigger than feeling it again myself.

What if I couldn’t do it? What if I damned the world because I wasn’t strong enough? What if, after everything, I’d let love become my greatest weakness instead of my greatest strength?

But I closed my mouth tight, swallowed the fear, my eyes welling with the unsaid words. My thoughts were clamped down. I used every ounce of focus I had—pulling on the dream-walking training I’d done with Wade and Serae, to keep those rampant anxieties from spilling into Declan’s mind.

With the mate bonds taking on a life of their own, it was more difficult to hide from my feelings for her. Now that we’d acknowledged that connection, dove into the closeness—both physically and emotionally—I didn’t want to go back to where things were before that.

I didn’t want to pretend that her bright green eyes weren’t the first thing mine fought to find every time I entered a room she might be in, that her every touch didn’t make me drip with need, that the sound of her voice didn’t make air lodge in my chest.

I wanted more of her, of them all, not less.

And I knew, truly knew, that the only way to achieve that was through honesty.

But not yet. I just wanted a little more time. Just a little more happiness before I changed everything again.

Didn’t we deserve that? A moment of peace? Or some semblance of it at least? Even if it couldn’t last?

She tilted her head, studying me, her eyes darting between mine as she took a few steps towards me. When her hand lifted and cupped the side of my face, a sob nearly broke free from my chest.

Her thumb traced my cheek bone, the pressure soothing and soft as she leaned her head in towards mine. The feather-light touch sparked through my entire body, traveling down my spine like a humming livewire.

“It’s just been a tense few days,” I finally managed, my eyes closed tight so that I didn’t have to stare into hers while I circled the full truth I wasn’t ready to tell. Instead, I offered her part of it. “And with the mate bonds solidifying—” I opened my eyes, until I found hers, my stomach clenching at the closeness of her, the smell, the realization that I could take a step closer and feel the intoxicating curves and lines of her body as they fit against mine.

Instead, I took a step back.

“Not that the bonds are a bad thing. That’s not what I mean.” I shook my head, tried to keep my thoughts from spilling out in a bumbling mess—something I would probably never master. “The power between us is amazing, sometimes it’s all I can do not to focus on it, not to sink into you all and just sort of drown in the dizziness of it for a few days—weeks. But then I feel guilty—giving into that with so much shit going on, with the literal fate of the world at stake—it just feels wrong. And now, with you all in my head, with Eli channeling the powers—it’s just a lot to process. I’m afraid of hurting someone, of hurting one of you. I just don’t know how to do this—” I took another step back until the back of my legs hit the bed. I let the momentum pull me onto it, my body sagging into the mattress, the brief relief of weightlessness. I laid back, focused on the ceiling—a cobweb that hung draped over the light fixture. “I don’t know how to be everything you want. Everything you all need. I don’t want to fuck things up.”

Dec’s eyes narrowed as she studied me, processing. She tilted her head and took a step closer, until suddenly I felt naked in front of her, impossibly vulnerable under her perusal above me. “Why do we all do this?”

“Do what?”

She snorted. “Allow ourselves to be so consumed by the possibility of failure that we stop taking chances, stop letting ourselves sink into the few things that make us feel good, that make us happy?” Her eyes met mine as she hovered over me, the soft light framing her head like a halo. “Aren’t you sick of it?” she shook her head, pinching the bridge of her nose. “I sure as hell am.”

I was. But saying that you wanted to not feel fear wasn’t the same as not feeling it.

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