Page 151 of Cursed Shadows 5

I keep my gaze ahead. “I wonder if we were afraid to be true to ourselves with each other. I wonder if, what we really feared, is that we find ourselves unlovable.”

He sets the glowjar down on a flat edge of stone.

I sigh. “I lured you with sex because it was what I had to offer. It is all I considered myself to be.”

His mouth twists.

“I never truly saw my own value,” I confess, “and I never understood myself beyond the mask I wanted everyone to see—including you.”

His hand reaches out for me, fingertips grazing my calf. It is a soft touch, cautious, and though it is shielded by my breeches, I feel it alight my body.

I swallow, thick. “There are things I need to learn about myself, Daxeel. There are things I must do alone.”

His touch stills.

I feel his surge of panic ice the air.

“I want to run the tavern, for Eamon. I want to live my life with Hedda, independent of a male. I want to make friends that are true. I want to be better… but worse, too.”

His hand slips away.

The crushing weight of his despair brings the taste of salt into the air, a faint touch of a stray tear.

He doesn’t wipe it away.

I look down at him. “I love you.”

His throat thickens.

“But I do despise you, and I resent you. It is not healthy for us to start again in that pain.”

He nods, his cheeks glistening in the faint light of the glowjar.

“I will meet you here.”

His lashes flutter, a silent question.

I sink to the rubble’s edge to sit beside him. “One Quiet, each week, we will meet here—and…” My shrug comes with a gentle sigh. “Over time, the pain might fade, our love might grow. But we must get to know each other again, Daxeel. Our true selves. I can’t imagine being with anyone but you,” I smile something pained at him, “but I can’t imagine being with anyone right now.”

His smile is small and wet, a tuck of the mouth.

The thickness of his lashes glisten over cerulean eyes. And I think he is the most beautiful male I have ever seen; but not beauty in the way that Eamon was.

It is something strong, powerful, terrible—and sanded down into absolute rawness.

Daxeel looks at me now, a broken male.

It is lovely.

I lift my hand for the softness of his inky curls.

His eyes shut as I brush my fingers through his hair. “You may court me in your designs. But I want you to be authentic, Daxeel. Not this—” I draw my hand back and gesture to him, his lovely, beautiful pain. “—just to appease me. That is a lie.”

“It is no lie,” his murmur is firm, as is the gaze he locks onto me. “I am broken. I am suffering. But I promise I will not lie to you about who I am.”

I nod, faint. “I return that promise.”

I bring my hands to flatten on the stone. My weight sags as I watch the dark spiral, a funnel of pain that we created. Hand in hand, we brought the worlds into our suffering.

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