Page 47 of The Hero Within
"Can't say I can promise that."
Eden shot him a heated glare.
He held his hands up in surrender. "But... I can probably try." Some part of the devil must have been in him, because he smiled. "Don't pretend to be friends, Eden. I can see you're struggling with this. Don't pull a muscle."
"How about not-quite-enemies then?"
"I prefer nemeses," he replied, every sarcastic volley easing the tension within him. This he could handle.
"Sounds bloody."
"You did hold a red-hot knife to my skin yesterday."
"Contrary to popular opinion, I didn't actually enjoy it," she muttered. "Speaking of..."
"All healed over."
"Even so"—she arched a pointed brow at him—"I'd like to have a look at it after breakfast. This is not a request."
Johnny stood, suddenly desperate for a piss. Something told him arguing would be futile. She had that look about her. "You just want to get me out of my shirt again, angel."
A faint curse caught his ear as he strode off into the bushes. "I'll give youangel."
"What was that?"
"Nothing," Eden muttered. "But I'm definitely spitting in your breakfast."
Despite himself, he smiled.
Johnny staggered into the sagebrush, hauling his shirt over his head and trying to surreptitiously rearrange his morning wood. "Give me a chance to wash my face and wake up."
Or more to the point, to take care of business.
He washed up at the creek, the splash of water on his face sloughing off the last remnants of sleep. Behind him, he could hear Eden dishing up breakfast.
It was no surprise to realize having her here, being around her, bothered him. It was like resurrecting ghosts he'd long thought buried, and last night hadn't helped.
"You won't ever escape me, boy,"said Bartholomew Cane in his head."Even if I die, I'll haunt you until the day you finally kick this mortal coil."
His mother's screams overtook him, thrusting him straight back into that horrific moment when Cane locked his mother inside their house—and lit it on fire.
Theonlyreason his mother was allowed to live was because Johnny begged for her life."I'll do anything...."
And he had done anything.
He'd killed people on Cane's whim, granting them swifter deaths than they'd have ever earned from Cane, and he'd called it mercy, even as something inside him shriveled up and died. He'd borne the brunt of years of abuse that would forever show on his skin despite the factwargs healed from almost anything, when the man who called himself his uncle turned to those darker moods that afflicted him.
And when Cane decided he wanted to make more wargs, Johnny had gone out and found candidates for him. No matter what it cost.
He squeezed his eyes shut.
The one person he'd never wanted to make a warg was Adam McClain, but when he'd tried to divert his uncle, it had all gone pear-shaped.
Cane could scent out weakness like he was part bloodhound.
It wasn't hard to understand why his mind was dredging up the past. Eden McClain brought with her a whole package of unfinished business, and his feelings about her were complicated. It would be easy to push her into the little box in his mind that he relegated his past to, but she kept pushing her way backout. He owed her a debt he could never repay and that was all this was, but at the same time, she also represented a whole shit-ton of confusion for him.
Want. Need. Yearning.
