Page 100 of Eternal Devotion
“And your father should have recognized he was equally compromised and found another way to get you home safely.”
I huffed, unsure if Mordecai’s analysis annoyed me or hit on a truth I’d spend fifteen years refusing to contemplate. “He wouldn’t have had to get me if I was doing what I said I was doing. If I hadn’t lied. Everyone blamed me.”
“Who’s everyone?”
“The town. Teachers. Students. Dad’s coworkers. Family. Deep down, probably my mother, but she’d never admit it.”
“I think you’re wrong. You blame yourself; therefore, you project your guilt onto everyone else.”
“You don’t know how it was. How it is.”
“No. You’re right. I apologize. I shouldn’t judge. I harbor my own guilt over my family’s death, even when I can hardly be responsible for a plague. Despite logic, I can’t help believing that if I’d been there, maybe I would have recognized that we needed to leave.”
“It wouldn’t have helped.”
“No. Yet, that’s how I feel.”
I took his point.
We continued in silence for several long minutes, the weight of sorrow a third passenger in the vehicle. I shifted, eager to change the subject and wash away the oppressive stink from the air before I choked on it.
“What do you miss most about being human?”
“Everything.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s a perfectly reasonable answer and encompasses how I feel.”
“List the top three things?”
Mordecai huffed, a faint smile curving his mouth. “You’re incorrigible.”
“I don’t know what that means. Stop dodging.”
“Food. I miss eating food. My current diet is… revolting.”
I chuckled. “Liar.”
“It is.”
“You didn’t seem revolted the other day, and Cristofer said—”
“Cristofer talks too much.”
“Are you saying you didn’t enjoy yourself? When it was me?”
Mordecai squirmed, and it was quite possibly the first time I’d seen him uncomfortable.
“Well?”
He tsked with obvious annoyance and stared out the passenger window as he mumbled, “It was incredibly arousing, but it doesn’t change my stance on the matter.”
“If it helps, I liked it.”
“Don’t get used to it.”
“Why not?”
