Page 200 of Beyond the Blue Horizon
He swiveled his attention back to me. “We can talk more about it once I’m finished.”
My entire being flailed.
It felt like everything I’d feared was right there, catching up to me, but multiplied by a thousand.
All while my spirit thrashed inside me. Reaching out and begging for him to hold the weight of my traumas.
Could I trust him?
Would he face my demons?
Would he hold my pain and my shame?
What would happen if I allowed him to see?
Would I have to go into hiding? Not the kind of hiding that I’d been doing, which was more running than anything. But would Finn, Nelly, and I have to become someone else?
Dread compressed my chest.
He reached for my face, and I didn’t realize I was crying until he let his thumb slide up my cheek to gather a tear.
I swallowed around the barbed wire in my throat. “I don’t know if I can do this, Theo. I don’t know if I can…”
“Piper.”
I gulped around the pain that lashed through his expression. The giving that we both came up to earlier this evening crushed with this truth.
“I…I need some time.” The words croaked out of me.
“Don’t run from me, Piper. Please don’t fuckin’ run from me.”
My eyes squeezed closed. “I’m not sure I know how to stay.”
He didn’t try to stop me when I turned and fumbled for the door. My hands would barely cooperate as I dug into my pocket to get my keycard.
I pressed it to the reader. It beeped and the lock disengaged, and I gasped out in pain and relief when it gave.
I slipped in through the crack, my breaths heaving as I rested my back against the door when it snapped shut behind me.
Only there was no peace in the barrier it created.
Nothing that shielded me from the power of Theo’s presence.
I could feel him through the wood.
Tendrils weaving through the cracks.
I forced myself to move, and I staggered up the stairs.
Lightheadedness rushed me as I stood in the middle of the open doorway.
Puffs of Finn’s little breaths filled the room.
His soul at rest while I’d never been so distraught.
My feet itched with the urge to run.
To just go.
