Page 101 of The Elf Beside Himself

“I’m talking to you,” I mumbled, although I knew damn well that wasn’t what he meant.

“And I’m glad you do,” he replied, his lips moving against one vertebra. “But I’m not a psychiatrist.”

“I don’t—I don’t like talking to people,” I grumbled, knowing how childish that sounded.

“You talk to me.”

“You’re notpeople,” I retorted. “You’re you.”

“And I’m not people?” His tone was almost teasing.

I rolled over, and he shifted to make space so that I could curl around him, resting my forehead against his. “You’re better than people.”

He huffed a soft laugh. “Thank you, I think.” He’d switched which hand was brushing through my hair, the other resting against my chest. I slid my hand around the back of his skull, holding his forehead to mine. I felt him sigh, the brush of his breath on my cheek. “Val, I’m worried about you.”

A tear slid its way down my nose. “Me, too. But when this is over—”

“It won’t be. Not for you,” he murmured, and I could hear the sadness in his voice. “Even when you solve this case—” I appreciated that he thought I was going to be able to do that. “—and we go back home, it isn’t going to be over. Because it will come back. Maybe in a month, maybe in a year, but it will if you don’t get help.”

I swallowed around the thickness in my throat.

He wasn’t wrong. I knew that.

“Why does that scare you so much?” he asked, and now I could hear something else along with the sadness, and I was afraid of what it was.

“I—don’t have a good track record with—well, with fucking anything,” I said, my voice rough.

“Have you tried talking to someone about this?”

I shook my head.

“About anything?”

Another head-shake.

He sighed again. “Will you, for me?”

“What if it doesn’t work?”

“Then it doesn’t work, and we try something else. But I think it will help, at least. If you actually try.”

“I don’t know if I can,” I whispered, bracing myself.

But all he said, in a tone that damn near broke my heart, was “Okay.”

“Taavi—”

He pushed back far enough that he could see my face, the hand in my hair cupping my jaw. “Val, I love you. You know that.”

I nodded.

“Do you really think that I’d stop loving you because you aren’t ready to talk to someone about your nightmares?”

I felt a few more tears chase their way across the bridge of my nose. I couldn’t talk, so I shrugged.

Taavi frowned. “Valentine Hart, do you even know what the words ‘I love you’ mean?”

I blinked, startled. “Y-yes.”

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