Page 110 of Savage Hearts
He can’t reconcile what Declan did to his brother with what I did for him.
He doesn’t understand how someone he thinks should be his enemy can call him a friend.
And he’s incredibly conflicted about his desire.
He wants me, but he doesn’t want to. It’s obvious in a thousand different ways.
And slowly, I begin to understand that when he answeredas long as it takeswhen I asked how long he would keep me here, he meant as long as it would take for him to work it all out in his head.
I think the biggest monkey wrench in his progress is my continued refusal to beg him to let me go.
“Refusal” isn’t the right word. It’s more like disinterest.
To my profound surprise, I’ve discovered that I like it here.
I like the clean air and the quiet. I like seeing a million stars at night. I like the simple rituals of meals, baths, and bedtime, of Poe knocking on the window with his beak every few days for treats.
I don’t even mind it when Mal has to leave me for hours or sometimes days to go into the city, because I’ve discovered that I like to walk alone in the woods with the sun on my face, the cold air biting my cheeks, and the satisfying crunch of frozen pine needles underfoot to keep me company.
I like the cabin that he and his dead brother built with their hands.
Most of all, I like the time I have to think.
I never did much of it before, not really. I studied and worked and spent any free time in front of a screen, distracting myself. Deadening my feelings.
Some people eat when they’re depressed. Some people drink, or do drugs, or have sex with strangers. The way I dealt with emotional pain was by feeding myself a steady diet of social media and video games and pretending it wasn’t there.
It seems so obvious now. I was lonely.
In a city of nearly a million people, I always felt alone.
But here, in the middle of nowhere with only a crow and a killer for company, I don’t feel alone.
I feel safe.
I feel content.
I feel, some days, like that bullet was the best thing to ever happen to me.
“I’ll be gone overnight.”
I look up from my scrambled eggs. Mal sits across the table from me, looking at his plate, pushing food around on it with his fork.
“Overnight?”
He nods. “I’m leaving right after breakfast.”
“Okay.”
He glances up at me. In the morning light, he’s breathtaking. His pale eyes are the color of fine jade.
“How’s your pain?”
I smile. He asks me the same thing every morning. “Pretty much gone, unless I try to lift something.”
His dark brows draw together into a frown. “Why would you try to lift something? You should ask me.”
That makes me smile wider. “It’s good for me to push myself.”
