Page 211 of His White Moonlight
“Go inside and look around.I’ll join you in a bit.”
I nodded and turned toward the door.He stepped around me and opened it.Even though he was shaking and struggling for control, he stood there and held the door for me until I was inside.
When I glanced back, he was already pacing next to the car.
“You guys fighting?”the woman at the register asked, watching him with me.
“Actually, we’re getting along for a change, and I think it’s breaking him.”
He paused, glancing at me, proving he could hear.
“I’d pay to have a man broken for me like that,” the woman said.“And my husband would pay to have a new truck.Different priorities, I guess.”
“You’re right.Maybe you should prioritize yourself over your husband, just as he’s prioritizing himself over you.It might open his eyes.”
“Or he might divorce me.”
“He might.But do you want to stay where you aren’t valued and appreciated for your worth?”
The woman’s expression closed down.Understanding that my opinion was no longer welcome, I went to browse the snacks.
Bennett joined me a few minutes later, and I had fun pointing to all the snacks I wanted to try.There were so many that Bennett had to make several trips to the counter with them.When the woman checked us out, she kept glancing at Bennett.Not in a flirty way, but an evaluating one.
It made me question the way Bennett treated me, too.
Yes, he’d made mistakes that had irrevocably hurt me.But his regret for what he’d done in ignorance was real.He was making every effort to make up for it, including finally listening to me.
I bit my lip again as he paid.
He turned suddenly, grabbed the back of my head, and sucked my bottom lip into his mouth.My stomach dipped, and my breath caught.Then his mouth was gone, and he had an arm wrapped around my shoulders as he accepted the card back from the woman.
Her gaze met mine.
“I wish I were as smart as you are when I was your age.”
“It’s never too late,” I said.“We get one life, right?”
“We humans do.”She handed the bags to Bennett, who had to release me to accept them.“I’d give anything to be a phoenix shifter and get a do-over.”
“They don’t get do-overs,” Bennett said.“Their pasts are always with them.”
He nodded and, with one arm loaded with bags, led me out of the store.I waited until we were outside.
“Do you really know a phoenix?”
“I do.”
“Is it true that there aren’t many of them?”
“It is.They were hunted to the brink of extinction by people who believed they could steal their ability to be reborn.”
He opened the door for me and then shut it, leaving me inside while he put the snacks in the trunk.When he got in, he inhaled deeply.
“Why are you sad?”he asked.
“I was just thinking of what you said—being hunted because you can live again.I don’t think I’d want to live again.It would take the magic out of living the life I’m living now.”
Bennett nodded.“The one I know feels the same way.He said that each life gets lonelier than the last because he’s watched too many people he’d cared about die.”
