Page 62 of Echo
“Do it.” I grabbed a fist full of dirt and threw it at his feet to further prove what a nuisance I was. “I’ve become more hassle than I’m worth. So do it.”
“I’m angry.”
“I know,” I hissed.
“I promised you I wouldn’t touch you while I was angry,” he said. My eyes jerked up to his face. The growl laced every word he said. “You can’t become more trouble than you are worth, because you are a rare treasure that might never exist again. If your intention is to see what will make me stop pursuing you, have at it. I’ll follow you through hell itself.”
“That’s not what you said yesterday.”
He growled at my words. “I apologize for hurting your feelings.”
I scoffed.
“I mean it.” The growl grew louder, but it sounded different than before. Like he was desperately protecting something rather than taking something away from another. “I didn’t mean to make you feel like less. I am the lucky one here.”
“Then why did you say that?”
“Because you scare me,” he mumbled so quietly that I barely heard him. “You’re the only person in hundreds of years to see me as a person, and it gives you a lot of control over me. In that moment, I needed to diminish you to reclaim my power.”
I could swear he was blushing, based on how he steadily refused to look at me and how he crossed his arms.
“It’s poor form as a man, and I am ashamed of myself.” The monster who ate a man in my living room was ashamed? “I vow to do better in the future.”
Had a man ever fully taken responsibility for what he’d done to me? No.
Yet this monster was willing to stand here and tell me he was sorry and that he was scared.
“If you hadn’t locked me out, I could have protected you.” His mouth twisted as he took a deep breath. There it was, the finger pointing. How if I’d only done things differently something wouldn’t have happened. But then he continued, “If I’d been paying better attention, he wouldn’t have even gotten in the house. We can both do better.”
The admission of his own oversight caught me off guard, and I blinked up at him for a solid ten seconds to come up with some type of response.
“Yeah,” I croaked.
“Are you damaged?”
“I don’t know. Probably.” I let out a breath.
He put out his hands for me to grab, and I accepted them easily. If he was going to kill me, he would have already done it. He pulled me to my feet and yanked me into his arms.
Air whipped around us as we went through the air, landing on solid land. “You apologized to me, saying you went too far, when you thought it was me killing you.”
His claws caressed my cheek. “As if I wasn’t playing the game right with you.”
Relief flooded my heart and made everything lighter.
“Now, run.” He released me. “Like you intended to.”
“Ranger.”
“The dog is fine,” he promised. “He’s got a limp where he was probably kicked down the cellar stairs, when he was locked in there.”
“Really?”
He nodded.
I took stock of myself. My knees complained from the fall and my nerves were battered. Maybe he was right. Maybe a run through the woods to get the last of this energy out of me. To let him prove that he wouldn’t harm me.
To help him, get his anger out of his system.
