Page 53 of Under an Endless Moon

My chest squeezed in a fist. “Fuck, Raven.”

“It’s not that bad,” she whispered.

My thumb brushed the apple of her cheek. “It sounded pretty bad to me.”

Her gaze drifted away before she blinked back my direction. “You were the only one who could ever keep them away.”

It sounded of a confession.

My guts turned over in a tidal wave of protectiveness.

Taken back to that time.

When I’d hear her crying in the night and go to her.

A wraith climbing into her bed at night.

Somehow, I’d managed not to fully push through the boundaries I’d set, but that didn’t mean I hadn’t wanted to.

Didn’t mean that I hadn’t wanted to wrap her whole and keep her.

But I’d known I’d only hurt her in the end. Burn a thousand bridges that would ruin us all.

Still, I was murmuring, “I hate that I haven’t been there for you.”

She was about twenty when we’d moved here to Moonlit Ridge. It’d been the year before that when things had gotten skewed between us.

My loyalties.

My devotions.

The way I lookedat her.

That was all right before every good thing in my life had been ripped out from under me. When I’d failed my sister.

Once we’d come here, the crew had all split up and no longer lived together.

That separation had been for the best. Putting up physical walls and miles between me and Raven. It wasn’t like we hadn’t remained close, but it was easier to ignore the wicked thoughts that invaded when I wasn’t sleeping under the same roof as her night after night.

But that also meant I couldn’t hear her when she needed me.

“Does River know?” I asked.

I hated that I thought I saw a glimpse of shame play through her features when she shook her head. “No.”

Goddamn it.

She had been alone, and my own shame gripped me by the throat. I pulled her a little closer and whispered against her forehead, “So fuckin’ sorry, Raven. Can’t stand it if you felt abandoned.”

She peeled herself back enough to look at my face, her voice wishing for a lightness neither of us could seem to find. “You couldn’t drive all the way across town and climb in through my window every time I had a nightmare, Otto.”

My thumb stroked along her jaw. “Maybe I should have.”

A thousand emotions arced in a wave through her gorgeous features.

Sorrow.

Belief.

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