Page 70 of Saddle and Scent
Beckett's dad's lecturing may have been annoying, but now it's proving to be right.
The Omega we're infatuated with could have died in this heat because we wanted to give her independence when we should have been stern about offering our assistance.
We should have insisted.
We should have ignored her protests and shown up anyway.
We should have known that her stubborn pride would drive her to attempt things that were dangerous for anyone to tackle alone, let alone someone who probably didn't eat enough breakfast and definitely didn't bring enough water.
No more.
We have to figure this shit out.
We have to find a way to protect her that doesn't involve pushing her away.
We have to learn how to love her without destroying everything we touch.
Because the alternative—finding her like this, limp and vulnerable and burning up from the inside—is not something I can survive.
Not again.
Not ever again.
The house is blessedly cooler, though not by much.
Wes directs us toward the living room, where he starts moving boxes and clearing space on the old couch. Beckett disappears into the kitchen, returning with towels and what looks like every piece of ice from her freezer.
We work in silence, each of us focused on the task at hand.
But underneath the efficiency, underneath the medical protocols and emergency procedures, there's a current of something deeper.
Fear.
Regret.
The bone-deep understanding that we almost lost her.
That our pride and our cowardice and our inability to figure out how to love her properly almost cost us everything.
That ten years of distance and careful walls and pretending we don't need each other almost ended with finding her unconscious in a field, alone and overlooked and dying from our neglect.
Never again.
Whatever it takes, however long it takes, however much pride we have to swallow or walls we have to tear down—never again.
She's ours.
She's always been ours.
And it's time we started acting like it.
13
FEVERED TRUTHS
~JUNIPER~
Consciousness comes in waves, like the tide rolling in and out on some distant shore.
