Page 70 of Tender Heart
I’m the world’s biggest idiot. This can only end badly. I don’t get this type of relationship. Life would never allow it.
“Get dressed, mo nighean. We need to hunt.”
Now the hurt in her eyes is not her own. It’s for me.
Another reason this is a fucked-up idea. Because it doesn’t feel like fooling around anymore.
Not to me, at least.
Nineteen
EVIE
From everything to nothing in a heartbeat. Hot to frigid cold. That’s what Callum and I are like. He’s not saying it, but something is holding him back. Something has him all up in his head about this. Us. If there is such a thing as ‘us.’ I don’t know what happens at the end of my time here, but I want to spend my days with him while I can.
I tug my shirt over my head and pull on my shorts. Slipping my boots on, I push through the door of the hut. Wandering toward the sound of waves, I find him on the beach, sitting on a large dark granite rock, tossing pebbles into the angry waves. The ocean breeze whips my hair around my face, and I scramble to tame it back as I reach him.
Sitting beside him, I stare into the stretch of water as if searching for the same thing he seems to be looking for. His gaze doesn’t break from the waves as I nudge his shoulder with my own. “Need to talk about it?” I ask, feeding his own words back to him.
After a long moment, he tilts his head and looks at me. “You ever make a decision thinking it’s the best one, only for it to implode your world in ways you could never have imagined?”
Heavens, that’s deep.
The more I think it over, the more it sounds like the words T wrote. Accusing me of making choices that led to Joshua’s death. For a brief slip of time, I believed it. Running through the darkened forest amid the storm, I believed it. Laying down, wanting to give up, I believed it. But when I woke up this morning, warm and safe in the company of one of the best men I have ever had the blessing to spend time with, I realized protecting myself was not a choice.
T is wrong.
In so many ways.
“You sure it’s the choice that was the cause? Maybe there’s more to it than you think. More complicated than we like to think,” I offer, staring at the ocean as the words spill over my tongue. They’re far too wise for my age, but I earned them. In every moment of grief, every day I survived after the accident. Every time I held those threatening letters in my hands and decided not to give them life.
“Evie—” His hand slides underneath mine, resting on my thigh.
“Callum?”
He huffs a strained breath before sucking in his next inhale like it’s the last parcel of oxygen left for humankind. “Never mind. We should hunt.”
I can’t take my eyes off his face.
The burn of whatever he left unsaid sends a swell of emotion into my chest. “Sure,” I finally whisper. “Show me your hunt, Tarzan.”
He chuckles and presses a kiss to the back of my hand. He’s off the rock a second later, pulling me down with him. We gather buckets, two very blunt-looking knives, and something I think is supposed to be a spear. Walking in a comfortable silence, we work our way around the rock pools, filling our buckets with tiny morsels the ocean offers up.
A school of small fish darts through one of the larger pools.
“Stab a couple, will you? Breakfast.” Callum nods to them.
“I’m not doing that.”
“Yes, you are. No help, no eat.”
Caveman.
No help, no eat,I say as pompously in my head as possible, giggling as I adjust the stick in my hand. He glances at me, his hands working an oyster loose from the rock as his eyebrows quirk up.
I must look like a madwoman. Spear in hand, cackling as I line up my next unwilling sacrifice.
Mwah ha ha ha.
