Page 143 of My Revenant
I coasted to the side of the road. Tears of frustration welled and fell, and my head slammed against the steering wheel. The sound of my scream was drowned out by the blare of the horn. Again, I smacked myself against it as if getting angry enough would motivate the fucking car to justmoveagain.
Then I was out. The door slammed as I inhaled a lungful of air just to scream it back out at the dense forest the highway cut through. “FUCK!”
My knees hit the gravel, and I crumbled in on myself. The weight of this, the final hurdle, broke me. I was done. I couldn’t go on anymore.
Let the forest claim me if Dex didn’t find me first.
Nothing happened for a long time—it was just me and the forest, the birds and the wind—until another vehicle approached. Its heavy tires slowed and pulled to a stop a short distance in front of my car.
I really didn’t have it in me to deal with a stranger, even if it was one who had stopped to help me. I was going to tell them to fuck off, snap at them like a starving feral dog snaps at someone trying to feed it.
Footsteps crunched on gravel, the rhythmic clink of metal.
Familiar boots stopped in front of me, out of place with the cane beside them. I followed long legs up, and then I was looking into the icy eyes of my dreams and nightmares.
The first thing I thought was that the short hair suited him. The first thing I felt was overwhelming relief.
Dex.
It was over now. Whatever he wanted to do with me, I was ready.
fifty-two
Dex - Present
SAFE AND LOVED.
I didn’t know the man at my feet. He’d lost weight, his cheeks were hollow, his skin pale. His hair was dull and greasy. He was smiling up at me, but beyond the smile, beyond the tears that filled his eyes, my honey-eyed inferno was missing. There was no life in him. No spark. This wasn’t my rabbit.
A year had taken a lot from both of us. It had started with what had almost been the end of my life, and it ended now, with the shell of his. Because I might have been the one who nearly died, but Jonah was the ghost.
“I missed you,” he said, dull eyes glassy and blurred with fresh tears.
Pain laced with rage coursed through me. I reached for him, my fingers threading through his hair, tightening, pulling his head back so he couldn’t look away from me if he tried. Because how dare he? How dare he say that to me when he was the one who left?
Despite the burn he must have felt in his scalp, Jonah didn’t react. He still smiled and didn’t try to pull away.
“I thought I killed you.” He sniffed, but it did little to help with his current state, tears and snot weeping like open wounds. “I didn’t know what to do. I thought I could outrun it. But I couldn’t. Wherever I went, you followed me.” His smile faded. “You are here, aren’t you?”
The days, the weeks, the months I’d spent without him had built something huge and ugly inside of me. But now that he was here, now that I was looking at him again, touching him again, all I wanted was to hold him for the rest of our lives.
My grip in his hair loosened, my hand smoothing over the strands. My fingertips trailed over his cheek. He turned into my palm, soaking up the warmth from it like he was starved of it.
“I’m here,” I told him.
“You’re real?” he asked, as if he still didn’t believe me.
“I’m real.”
Before I’d sent Harper to Jonah, there had been so many emotions at war within me. Betrayal because he had left me. Rage because he promised he never would. Grief because I had lost him. Mostly, though, there was a deep ache in my chest. A void deeper than anyone else had ever left behind. I longed for him with every breath.
Harper had updated me on the state Jonah was in when he left him. Jonah was alive, but he wasn’tliving. He existed in a constant state of survival, stuck between the life he’d destroyed and the way forward. Unable to find it for himself.
Seeing it for myself was different. I wanted to hold onto the rage, to the hurt, but how could I? He had hurt himself far more than he’d ever hurt me.
He had run because it was his instinct to run, and I’d chased him for the same reason. But it was more than instinct. It was purpose. Through it all, we were still each other’s purpose.
I could have caught him months ago, but he hadn’t been ready.Ihadn’t been ready. His words that day hurt me more than any stab wound. I couldn’t show up, have him see I was alive, then turn and run from me again anyway. I’d survived it once. I couldn’t do it again. I needed him to give up, and he needed me there to pick him up when he did.
