Page 34 of The Mech Who Loved Me
"Don't be sorry." He scratched at the faint scar on his chin. "Happenoften?"
"Sometimes," she saidnoncommittally.
"Something bad happened toyouonce."
She didn'tdenyit.
"It's written all over you, luv." Those wicked eyes narrowed, but more in consideration than anything else. "You don't have totellme."
Ava drew her knees to her chest. Suddenly Hague was back, trailing ghostly fingertips down her spine. She pressed the heels of her palms to her closed eyes. "I don't really want to talk about it. But yes, something bad happened to me once. Something that gives me nightmares, something I can neverescape."
A soft sigh escaped him. When she lowered her hands, she found Kincaid sprawling across her bed, looking utterly relaxed, his fingertips brushing against her calf through thesheets.
"We all have fears," hefinallysaid.
"Even you?"The mightybehemoth?
He cradled his mech hand behind his head, his abdominal muscles flexing. "Jaysus. I've had more than my fairshare."
"Butyou're...."
"I'm...?"
"So powerful," she blurted, gesturing to his body. "And cocky. And rash. I cannot imagine anything could ever frighten you." The past swam up between them, when she'd tended to his broken nose, and Kincaid had snapped at her to get it healed so he could rejoin the hunt in time. "You wanted to hunt a vampire, when the very thought made my bloodcurdle."
Shadows darkened his eyes. "Vampires don't really scare me. It would be a quick death. A fairlycleanone—"
"You've got to be jesting me," she broke in. "I cannot possibly imagine death by vampire to be quick, or particularlymerciful."
"It is compared to the fate of others." His voice roughened. "Over in an instant of fierce terror and pain, rather than the long drawn-out spiral downward of something degenerative where you stare your death in the face every day, wondering when the time will come where your body fails you. Wondering how many days you can spend trapped within your body before yougomad."
"Well, I couldn't think of anything worse than avampire."
"Really? Not a single thing? Not even whatever causes yournightmares?"
Ava opened her mouth to reply, but an image of Hague sprang to mind, strapping her to his examination table and shining the harsh light in her eyes as she screamed and tried to escape—to no avail. A chill ran down her spine. Kincaid was right. Death by vampire might be considered a blessing in somecircumstances.
Orwasit...?
She'd lived after all. She'd survived the unsurvivable as Hague infected her with the craving virus and then cut her heart out of her chest while she swayed in and out of ether dreams. It was a horrible nightmare—six months of torture and misery and hopelessness—until Perry and Garrett had appeared, bringing light and hope back into her world. Bringing freedom. Maybe Ava would never escape the past, but she was here and now, and there was a whole life stretching out in front of her, filled with all the things she'dneverdone.
Perhaps the idea wasn't to forget the nightmares, but to accept them. She'd spent years trying to pretend she'd put all the pieces of herself back together. To hide her screams at night, to make sure nobody knew how much it sometimes scared her to leave the house and walk the streets. To pretend she was confident and had her wits about her at all times, when but one sharp noise might send her crashing down like a cracked porcelain vase given ashove.
"You're right. There can be worse things than vampires. And you, sir," she pointed out, before he could interrupt, "have initiated a rather macabre turn ofconversation."
Kincaid scraped his hand over his face, sighing as he rolled onto his side. "Maybe it's macabre, but maybe... it's easy to talk to you about the fears a man has." One blue eye locked on her as he drew his hand away. "You're very easy to talkto,Ava."
She blushed. Nobody said that about her, especially not men. Usually they were searching about them for some means of escaping her. "When I'm not babbling about autopsies or the craving virus, doyoumean?"
"What's wrong with hearing you speak of dismembering cadavers? I think all those others who disdain you simply have weak stomachs." His smile faded. "I didn't realize how long it's been since... I could actually talk tosomeone."
He didn't look happy about thisrealization.
"What's wrong?" she whispered. "You sound like that's a horrible thing." Every person needed a friend—someone who could hear their inner thoughts withoutflinching.
"It's not." He toyed with her blankets again, looking so much younger in this moment. "It just makes me miss my brother. He was the only other person I could speak tolikethis."
Oh."He's...?"
