Total pages in book: 254
Estimated words: 240032 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1200(@200wpm)___ 960(@250wpm)___ 800(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 240032 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1200(@200wpm)___ 960(@250wpm)___ 800(@300wpm)
My voice cracked, and I had to swallow to reset it, hating that it still didn’t come out normal. “I wish this wasn’t in me, but it is. I’ve tried to come to terms with it, you know? This is who I am. I can ignore it, but I know it’s there. I just… I thought you should hear it from me, instead of that asshole.”
The vein at his temple started throbbing as his jaw got even more pronounced.
“You know the kids hate him? Even Phoebe mentioned he was a jerk a long time ago. He had the nerve to raise his voice to Agnes,” I tattled.
Henri stood there, staring over angrily. There was no clear sign if he was mad at me for what I’d done, mad at the fact no one might have told him how much of an asshole Dom was, or at Dom for being Dom.
Or at me for being me? Just thinking that broke my heart and made my eyes sting. But it was what it was, and even if I cried afterward, I was going to hold my head up high. Apologizing for my magic would be like saying I was sorry for not having blue eyes. Wasn’t that what I would tell Duncan if he ever worried about what he looked like and who he was?
Even if Henri couldn’t love me or appreciate me, that didn’t mean no one else could.
Henri lifted his hand and scrubbed it down his face before pinning me with a look that made me want to squirm. His voice was thick. “First off…,” he began, and I braced myself, “there is nothing wrong with you. Do I need to say that again?”
I held my breath and shook my head.
He was just getting started. “You, of all people, should know,” he glared at me hard, and I mean hard, “without life, there can’t be death, Nina.”
I swallowed and stared right back at him, wanting to hear what else he had to say, but I was scared too. Scared he might break my heart without even knowing it. Without meaning to. Scared he would make me second-guess myself more than I already had so much of my life. Scared he would make me regret moving here, and I didn’t have the luxury of feeling that way.
But he was on a roll, and he kept going, his hands forming fists under his armpits as he crossed them over his chest again. “We don’t need to talk about that right now. It wasn’t my place to bring it up before, but it is now. Tell me exactly what happened with the people who tried to kidnap Duncan.”
Dang it. I should’ve known he was going to ask for details. I would have too.
And of all the crap I’d just brought up, this was what he wanted to focus on? It wasn’t like I could argue with him over it. I leaned back and squeezed my arms to my chest, and I told him.
I told Henri about being at a campground in Oregon and having a group of men carrying obsidian come over while Duncan had been peeing.
I told him about how they’d snuck up from behind and gotten me in a chokehold, a knife to my throat, while they had grabbed my boy as he did his business.
How I’d magically pinched and I’d pinched, and I’d pinched again, not fully, but enough when that knife had grazed my skin.
Then I told him about how almost the exact same thing had happened again about a week later, at a different campground in rural South Dakota. Instead of a knife, it had been a gun. Instead of three men, there were two.
Another pinch and another.
And while I told Henri about it, I watched his face. It stayed plain and grave. His only movement had been a bob of his throat. And only after that, after he’d blinked at the end of my story, did Henri murmur, “You did what you had to do to protect your boy. There’s no shame in that.”
I shrugged, aware he was right and not regretting my actions but still wishing I hadn’t put us into that situation in the first place. It was still something I was probably going to have to think about from time to time for the rest of my life. But it wasn’t like I had made those people do what they’d done.
That didn’t make me feel any better.
And as he stood there, I also wished I hadn’t needed to tell him everything.
Despair, discomfort, and sadness at the idea that this might change what was left of our friendship after I’d been pushy with him the other night made my stomach feel funny. I hugged myself even tighter, like it would help the rest of me stick together as I laid out piece after piece for inspection. Hoping I measured up.