Page 39 of Crossing Fire

It hurt like only an old wound could to hear him say that in the past tense.

“I do know it. That’s always been my biggest fear. Don’t you know I’d choose your survival over my own happiness, my own life?”

His eyes were glinting at me, positively glowing from within. “And you’re saying that’s really the only reason you left me? To save me.”

“I would have done a lot worse to protect you.”

“You weren’t getting bored and restless in one place? Can you really say you weren’t starting to feel trapped? Will you swear that there wasn’t some part of you that wanted to leave?”

“I swear it! It’s been hell for me without you. Every minute was against my wishes, even if I believed it was necessary.”

In a move too quick for me to anticipate, he grabbed me, pulling me close against his warm chest. He was squeezing to the point of pain. I didn’t protest. Nothing could ever compare to being wrapped in him. I wanted to stay that way forever.

“I’m not sure I ever told you,” I began after a long spell of silence. “I’d gone a bit numb before I met you. I didn’t feel much at all. And then I saw you and poof the world was in color again. That’s why you always scared me a bit. Feelings are scary when you’ve allowed yourself to grow anesthetized to the world.”

I pushed my hand between us and felt along his body until I had my palm over his heart. I pushed there meaningfully. “When are we going to talk about this?”

“I don’t know. When are you going to stop running and destroying everything you leave behind?” His voice was stark with pain, with bitterness.

He couldn’t forgive what I’d done, which I could well understand; I’d never so much as tried forgiving myself.

“I’m self-destructive,” I told him quietly, my voice shaking.

That surprised a bark of a laugh out of him. “You think?” Sarcasm dripped from the words.

“Yes. I never learned how to build. All the talents in my life have been honed toward deconstruction, and because of that, I am better at destroying than I have ever been at building, and in spite of everything I’ve always known it. I know it’s no surprise to you. It wasn’t easy for me to do what I did. I hated leaving you. It hurt me too. I hope someday you can believe that. You can’t lead a life like mine without killing important parts of yourself. To make the things that make you weak die. I killed a part of myself when I left you. I thought I’d killed it forever. I realize now I didn’t do a good job.”

“For once in your life, can you speak fucking plainly?”

I couldn’t say it. I just couldn’t get the words out.

It would destroy me to learn for a certainty that I’d lost his heart forever.

“How can we fix this?” I finally asked him. “I want a truce. I don’t want you to hate me anymore. I don’t want to hate myself.”

He gripped my hair in both hands and dragged my face to his to kiss me, growling, “Does this feel like hate to you? Are you so blind?”

I nodded, tears falling from my face onto his. “Completely. I’ve never trusted my heart. Everything it tells me feels like a lie. I do think it makes me blind. But this hostility, this never-ending rage of yours… I can’t stand it. Tell me how to make it go away.”

The fury, that overwhelming resentment of his was finally stripped from his voice when he said quietly and emotionally, “Stay. Don’t leave again.”

“Keeping me here with you indefinitely will ruin your political career. They will unseat you.”

“They can try. None of that is your concern. Your job is to stay. Just stay.”

It was much easier to reply to that than it had ever been before. Our child had changed everything.

I would go to war with him.

I would reshape my whole purpose, my whole existence to keep him now and to protect our son.

“I will stay here for as long as I’m welcome. I promise.”

“Please, don’t promise. I can’t stomach the sound of that yet. Time is all that can prove the truth to me.”

“Fair enough. So are we like, together now?”

He pushed my head down to his chest, ear to his steady, pounding heart. He said something softly but vehemently in Druidic.