Page 42 of She is the Darke

He gently pulled the bat out of her hand, set it on the ground and pulled her in, hugged her against his chest, and sighed. He rested his cheek against the top of her head as she clutched the fabric of his sweater and wished so badly that she could be normal.

“Do you remember the moment it happened?” he asked.

“I was staying the night with Rachel, a few months before you kissed me, and I’d had a bad dream. I didn’t want to wake her up, so I left her room and sat in the kitchen, trying to steady out so I wouldn’t Change. I heard a sound at the door, and it was you, sneaking back in the house.”

“I remember this. You were sitting at the kitchen island, pale as a sheet, looking like you had seen a ghost.”

“You just stood there for a minute, like you were afraid I was going to call out for your dad and tell on you, and then you moved toward the stairs. You stumbled on the way, and I knew you had been drinking. You held onto the banister and waited to see if your dad would wake up at the noise, then you looked back at me and asked, ‘Are you okay?’”

“I was drunk that night,” he said. “I was working through a lot back then. You got up from your chair, and you pulled a bottled water from the fridge. You walked over and handed it to me, and said, ‘It’s going to be all right.’ And at first, I thought you were talking about you. Whatever had you looking haunted.But you weren’t. I figured that out later. You were telling me everything was going to be okay for me.”

“You hugged me. You had been drinking and probably didn’t know what you were doing, but you thanked me for being nice to you, and I could tell you meant it. It was the first time I had seen you be kind; vulnerable. After that, my crow couldn’t stop paying attention to you. It was that little glimpse of the real you, not the abrasive, combative, middle-finger-to-the-world boy you pretended to be around your friends and your dad. That night changed it all for me.”

“That’s why you’ve been so angry with me. I kissed you, and then you felt betrayed, and then left behind.”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“You’re scared I’m going to do that again?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.” He cupped the back of her head and hugged her closer. “Then I don’t mind.”

“Don’t mind what?”

“The times when you feel you need to panic and punish me. I ask that you try to work on that over time and go easier on me, but I don’t mind if you have questions about other women. You gotta build trust. If you have questions or feel that panic, you can light me up, but you can’t block me and shut me out before I have a chance to figure things out with you. We can’t do that.”

She sniffed and looked up at him. “Are you…are you being the mature one right now?”

“Yeah, and it’s awful. I’m gonna need you to step up and carry some of the load.”

She laughed thickly and dropped her forehead down onto his chest. “Can you block Danielle and Erin?”

“Already did it. Right after I told them both to leave me alone, and that I’m in a committed relationship. Mostly becauseit really bothered me that you said that yesterday. I’m not afraid of commitment, Demi. Take it back.”

“I take it back. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. I understand better now.”

“You’re not freaking out over the shifter-bond stuff?”

“Woman, I have two acorns in my pocket right now.”

“What?” she asked, easing back so she could look him in the eye.

“I picked up two damn acorns this morning because they reminded me of the trinkets your crow likes. I was hella mad when I put them in my pocket. Mad or no, I still collected them because I knew I was going to want to give them to you later. No, your bond doesn’t scare me. You feel big to me, too.”

“You like me,” she accused.

He arched his eyebrow.

“Tell me you want it,” she teased in a deep voice.

He laughed a wicked sound and angled his face slightly away, shook his head. “You get to me, Darke. You’re in my head.”

She grinned. “Good. That makes two of us. Now you know how it feels.” She held her hand out. “Can I hold the acorns?”

He chuckled and dug them out of his pocket, along with a shiny gum wrapper. He tried to flick the gum wrapper away from the acorns, and muttered that it was just trash, but she snatched up the gum wrapper too.

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