Page 170 of Blood & Betrayals

“What do you need to know?” he asks, his thumb brushing the curve of my cheek. He’s obviously having as much trouble reading me as I am him.

I open my eyes and step back, pulling away from the comfort of his touch. “Nothing.” I shake my head and clear my throat. “Thanks for… this.”

“Always running from something,” he says, the words shivering down my spine.

“Be my friend,” I say, the words falling from my mouth. I have no idea where they come from, but I do know I can be genuine with this person. While he elicits some unwanted feelings and makes the darkness swirl inside me, I can’t deny I like feelingseen.

“What?”

“Stay and be my friend,” I say again.

I can feel the skepticism in his voice. “I thought I was a narcissistic, cowardly creep.”

My lips twitch. “Well…”

He growls softly, and I shiver at the sound. “Why do you want me as your friend? You’re not lacking in companionship.”

I consider his question. He’s right. I have more people in my life now than I’ve ever had, but… “There is something about you.” I pause, trying to formulate my thoughts, and I let myself face the very truths I have been trying to avoid. “It makes me think you understand a side of me that no one else does.”

He watches me for a long moment, and my skin tingles beneath his stare. “Friends,” he confirms. “For now.”

I hold my hand out. “Friends. No boundary crossing.”

He takes my hand after a moment, shaking it. “Why were you running?”

A laugh escapes me, and it is no longer a foreign sound. “If only I knew.”

“Running from yourself, then.” We start walking, keeping a comfortable distance between us. I feel a sense of peace in this agreement with him. I feel understood and strangely safe.We approach the mouth of the forest, and I look back at the beckoning darkness.

“I don’t know why I’m drawn here, but I don’t want to be.”

“Fae feel most at home in the wild. It’s the closest they can get to Faerie.”

Reaching out, I glide my fingers over the trunk of a tree, leaving a trail of glittering dust in their wake. “I know. I hate it.”

“Why?” he asks.

I shrug, pulling my hand back. It’s a lie. I definitely know why, but I have already opened up too much.

“I used to hate what I was,” he says into the silence.

I glance at him. “It’s a lonely business. Hating your kind.”

“It is… isolating.”

I sit on a fallen log, feeling safe here even though my last visit ended so violently. I watch the stranger as he looks up through the canopy, gazing at the slight bit of early morning sky visible through the branches. “You’re not like other fae, if that’s any comfort. I’m not like my kind either.” He looks back at me. “There is power in being different, a strength unknown to most.”

“Why did you come back today?” I ask.

I see the way his shoulders tense. He hesitates for a moment before replying, “I never left.”

The admission doesn’t bring about the same level of fear it used to. “Was I right?”

“About?”

“That you understand me?” I’m unsure why the question feels so heavy between us, but I desperately need it to be true.

“I do,” he replies, and I can hear the smile in his voice. “You hide so much of yourself from others but even more from yourself.”

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