Page 124 of Bosse
What a waste to have spilled blood for a pack that turned their backs on him.
He’d yanked in any foolish emotions, focused only on surviving one day at a time.
A cookie fairy came along and swept up the piles of emotional dust and reshaped his soul, breathing life back into his dead insides.
Since then, she’d led him on a wild ride of emotional turmoil from anger at her taking risks to meet with him, to shock over helping him escape, to the joy of kissing someone so sweet, to terror over leaving her in the castle.
That many ups and downs would wear out anyone, but it was nothing compared to the mental battle he fought to figure out if the woman he cared for had been using him from the start.
His mind yelled at him not to be fooled.
That was how he’d won so many matches, but this wasn’t survival. This was life. He had no experience with figuring out something this complicated.
But his heart had stirred awake and now had an opinion as well. His heart asked what she had done that was so wrong.
After thinking on that for a while, he came up with an honest answer. He had forsaken the word trust in a place where it would only have gotten him mutilated and then killed.
She’d gained his trust by risking her life to help him more than once, even while knowing she couldn’t leave before finding her friend.
Feeling that his trust had been misplaced and foolish on his part banged up his heart, which he’d paid no attention to for many years. He couldn’t ignore that organ any longer.
He wanted her trust.
He wanted to trust her. Everything hinged on believing he could.
Her stomach growled, and he smiled. Stubborn woman would not tell him she was hungry and very likely thirsty.
Titan must have heard her as well. He said,Water is nearby. I hear it moving.
I do, too, Bosse replied.We’ll stop and eat.
He announced, “We have a good place up ahead to take a break.”
“Fine.”
That’s the only reply he’d heard in the last hour. No other four-letter word had ever sounded so awful.
Once he’d pulled off the dirt road and guided his horse through a thin forest, he paused close to an easy-moving stream running over and around rocks. He stepped off the horse and then lifted her down.
She grabbed the saddle when she wobbled for a moment, then got that pert chin up and walked away.
Shaking his head at the cool reaction, he pulled what he needed from the bags and sent the horse to drink from the stream and feed on what grass grew in spots.
“What do we have in these bags?” he asked her in an upbeat tone, not caring about the food so much as breaking through her icy barrier.
“Bread, jerky, fruit. That sort of thing.” She tried to pretend a lack of interest, but her stomach growled again, defying her.
If he chuckled now, she would likely not speak to him again until tomorrow and refuse to eat. Instead, he dragged a thick section of trunk from a dead tree over and waved his hand for her to sit first.
She stared at the trunk with debate, causing her facial muscles to twitch, then shook her head and sat. More silence as they ate some of their supply.
He was ready to break and ask her what it would take for them to be at least friends again. That sounded like a stupid idea. While she might be the best friend he’d ever had, she was way more than that to him.
Emotions sucked. How was he supposed to figure this out?
She stood, brushing off the dark gray pants she’d chosen over a skirt. That had come from the guard’s clothing supply. She’d refused to wear their shirts, opting for a simple white one she’d found in the room where she’d been locked. The pants had pockets, so she still carried that gadget Adrian had given them.
“Ready to get moving again?” Bosse asked, then groaned inwardly. Could he not find something better to say to her?
