Page 59 of Citadel

“I think about it all the time.” His fingers have tightened in my hair again. He’s holding a bunch of it in a fist. Holding, not pulling. “All the time.”

“So why—”

“How the hell am I supposed to just stop? It’s been years now, and I’ve sacrificed everything for this search. I’ve given up… everything. Including any hope I ever had of being with you. I’ve sacrificed everything. How the fuck can I just let it go now?”

I gasp at the earnestness of the words. The deep emotion I hear in them, despite their quietness. “I… I really don’t know. But if you don’t put a stop to it eventually, you’ll have to sacrifice the rest of your life to it too.”

“I know.” He lets out a raspy sigh. Leans his head back against the tree trunk. He’s still gripping a fistful of my hair. “But I don’t know if I can. Could you give up? On your sister? Could you ever give up?”

I have no choice but to tell him the truth. “No. Probably not. Not unless I know she’s really dead. But it’s different. With my sister, it’s different.”

“Why?”

I bite my lower lip, suddenly nervous, but I say it anyway. “Because my sister didn’t choose what happened to her. Any choices she made she was cornered into by brute force. Can the same be said about your brother?”

Something tense flickers across his expression and then vanishes. He sighs. “No. He wasn’t forced into it. Not in the same way.”

“He didn’t choose his circumstances—none of us do—but he had other choices he could have made. Breanna didn’t. So yes, I’m not going to give up on the hope of saving her. Because I’ll be saving her from bad men who are hurting her. I’m not trying to save her from herself.”

That tension clenches in his jaw and flares his nostrils until he shakes it away. “Yeah. I know. I get it.”

“There’s only so much you can ever do to save someone from themselves.”

We stay in silence for a minute, my head still resting in his lap although I’ve turned so I’m looking up at him. Eventually his face softens. Then his big hand strokes my hair again. “I guess that’s why you gave up on me.”

“What was I supposed to do? Go chasing after you? Sit around and wait with bated breath for you to finally show up again?”

“No. You weren’t supposed to do that.”

“I would have,” I admit in a voice that wobbles only a little. “If you left in a different way, I would have waited.”

He turns his head, clearing his throat roughly. “I know.”

“That’s why you did it the way you did.” I know the truth now, so clearly, when I only caught glimpses of it before. “You must have known that. You didn’t want me to wait.”

“I’ve never had anything to offer you, baby. I’m not going to let you waste your life the way I’ve wasted mine. Better for you to hate me than to throw your life away on a lost cause like me.”

Our eyes meet. The gaze holds for way too long. I have no idea what to say to that—to what he just admitted to me so bluntly.

It’s not like I can give him any hope.

I don’t want to throw my life away any more than he wants me to.

Some things just aren’t meant to be. And the universe can’t be forced to change enough to allow it.

I roll over onto my side so I’m looking out into the dark woods instead of up at him. “Why did you come back to Monument?”

“I’ve been wanting to. For so long. Ever since I left. But I was trying…” He makes that breathy huff of what’s almost laughter. “I was trying to be… good. But I did hear that my brother might have come through that region, and I jumped on the first legitimate excuse I could to see you again. So I guess I’m not as good as I’d like to be.”

“Nobody is,” I mumble. “No one is as good or strong or brave or righteous as we’d like to be. I think we’re all a little bit broken.”

“Are you?” He’s very softly caressing my head again, sliding his fingertips along my forehead and then running them along the tangled waves of my hair.

“Of course I am! I’m always… I’m always clinging desperately to the slightest bit of safety even if it’s not really what I want. Because I’m constantly afraid that even that will be ripped away from me. My hopes for my life are about this big.” I hold my thumb and forefinger about two inches apart. “I don’t even dream of anything more. If I did…”

“What would you want if you did dream bigger?”

I shrug, suddenly embarrassed by the admission.

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