Page 229 of Shadowblood Souls
I don’t bother to ask, just flop right down on the double bed in the first of the bedrooms. Before I can relax, Jacob sinks down next to me.
“I’m not leaving you alone,” he says in a raw voice. “I’m not letting them get one more chance to come at you.”
I could point out that I don’t have to be alone even if he isn’t in the room. Or that he can stand between me and any attackers just fine from anywhere else on the boat.
But I don’t have the energy to fight with him. Not after all the fighting we’ve already done.
Not after seeing how desperate he was to defend me even after he’d already saved me.
“Fine,” I mutter, and squirm under the blankets so there are at least two layers of fabric as a barrier between me and his side of the bed.
Then I close my eyes and sink into oblivion.
Twenty-Six
Jacob
Iwake up with a pounding ache in my head and a flutter of unfamiliar emotion in my chest. My pulse hitches in the second it takes me to orient myself.
I’m sprawled on a bed that’s rocking gently with the water that buoys this boat up. And Riva is lying next to me in the darkness, her fiercely sweet scent wrapped all around me.
My heart keeps thumping at its heightened rate. I lift myself gingerly into a sitting position and peer at her in the dim light that seeps through the bedroom’s small, curtained window.
Her petite body swathed in the covers I’m poised on top of, huddled with her back to me right at the far edge of the mattress.
As far as she could get from me without falling off the bed.
The ache in my head has retreated, but a new one winds around the base of my throat. I only vaguely remember insisting that I would stay in here with her.
Did she let me because she understood or because she was too worn out to argue about it?
I close my eyes.You are such a fucking prick, Jake.
The thrum of my blood through my veins pushes me toward her. Clamors at me to hug her close and prove to her how much she means to me.
But hugging her wouldn’t accomplish that. She’d flinch away the second I touched her.
The only time she’s willingly embraced me was when she felt she had to or I’d screw us all over.
My hands ball at my sides, my fingernails digging into my skin with pinpricks of pain.
My memories of the attack and our escape are hazy and disjointed, as much blaring anger and horror as any concrete imagery. But I remember the press of her lips against mine, the shock of elation and longing cutting through the savage emotions that were gripping me.
Elation and longing immediately tainted by my realization of how wildly my powers had been flailing around.
I saved us and then I practically called our attackers right back down on us. Nice work.
The thought sends a different sort of thrum through my body. The assholes who tried to gun us down are still out there.
They shot Riva. They almost killed her.
Theywantedto.
My teeth set on edge, a surge of rage welling up inside me—the one emotion in me that’s comfortingly familiar.
I can’t change what’s already happened. I can’t undo all the shit I put this woman through.
I can’t make different decisions years ago. I can’t bring Griffin back to life.
