22. Chapter 22
22
T he second those words slid past her lips—Rebecca’s first confession, just one of many she’d gone to great lengths over the centuries to avoid at all cost—her awareness slammed back into her with a vengeance.
By the Blood, what was she thinking , saying something like that out loud to anyone but especially to Maxwell?
She’d had no choice. The cord between them had drawn it out of her like breath, and Rebecca had not been in control.
She was now, though, suddenly and without explanation.
Of all the things she could have said to begin this conversation, she’d uttered the most compromising opening imaginable, leaving him to interpret it in any number of unforeseeable ways.
It was just the tip of the iceberg, sure, but if the shifter kept digging, if he kept pushing her like he’d pushed her now, how much longer could Rebecca resist him before she cracked wide open like a raw egg, never to be put back together again?
If that happened, there was no conceivable way to erase the enormous mess that would unleash.
This was foolish and reckless and nothing like what she’d convinced herself she had to be.
As all these realizations settled in while Rebecca gazed up into Maxwell’s eyes, helpless in the grip of their silver glow, she wanted to shake her head and shut this whole thing down. She tried to say so, but all she managed was a weak wobble of her head.
Maxwell’s eyes widened as he searched her face, and in an instant, his desperation erupted into murderous rage before he pummeled a fist into the wall just a fraction of an inch beside her head. “ Tell me !”
Bits of plaster broke away beneath his fist. She felt a few topple onto her shoulder and heard more of them dropping to the floor at her feet.
“Or what?” she snapped. “You’ll beat it out of me? I’m not an easy target, Maxie, I can promise you that.”
His next growl cut off halfway, and he seemed to realize what he’d done, threatening her with violence to her office wall, once again pinning her in place beside the closed office door, as if she’d already attempted to escape and flee from him altogether.
He glanced at his own fist still pressed into the plaster, and his expression morphed instantly. The snarl disappeared beneath wide-eyed disbelief, humiliation, shame—the much more aware version of him appalled by the beast his anger and desperation had unleashed.
He instantly lowered his arm before stepping away to give her space.
When Rebecca’s breath caught in her throat at the sharp agony jolting through her chest and down her arms, she saw the same pain flicker across his face in a fierce grimace before he covered it up again.
Then the shifter sighed and ran a hand through his hair. When he spoke next, his gaze had dropped to the floor between them. “Tell me. Please.”
It seemed the worst of the spell their unexplained connection had woven over them now came to an end. Or at least it had weakened enough to release them from its grasp.
Tell him?
That wasn’t just something she could deliver on command, like a cheap trick at a birthday party.
With her breath slowing again, though her pulse still roared in her ears and threatened to deafen her to everything else, Rebecca glanced around her office. “Do you think maybe you should take a seat first?”
She was stalling, but opening up like this and telling the story Maxwell wanted, the way he wanted, went against everything she’d done, all the secrets she’d kept and all the sacrifices she’d made simply to ensure her own survival in this world.
It wouldn’t be as easy as just spitting it out.
At first, it looked like Maxwell might have considered taking a seat to hear the facts. But then his entire demeanor stiffened, his back growing rigidly straight, and he lifted his chin before lifting his gaze for a split second to meet hers. “I’ll stand right where I am, thank you. I can handle it.”
He had no idea what he was getting himself into. No idea what he was asking from her.
Fine, she could let him stand, but if her words swept him literally off his feet, it wouldn’t be her fault.
What was she thinking? What words?
Then again, maybe Maxwell did know what he was getting into. Maybe he’d seen enough on his own to form an idea of the truth. Whatever version of it he’d settled on, he obviously didn’t like it enough to leave it the hell alone.
He needed to hear it from her, whether or not she thought it was a good idea.
Or maybe she could use this as a chance to gauge his reactions while she gave him the bare minimum. What she saw could tell her in its own way what else he carried in his mind. Whether it was concern for and loyalty to her, or hidden information requested by her enemies.
The truth was never just the truth, after all. It could also be a tool, a weapon, a final sliver of redemption.
Or the catalyst for total annihilation.
“Rebecca,” he murmured, watching her as she walked contemplatively around the office, weighing her options.
His gaze consistently burned the side of her face.
“I know,” she said. “I’m getting there, just give me a second.”
“After everything else?”
She whirled toward him and snapped, “If you can’t wait a few more seconds while I figure out how to say what I never thought I’d tell anyone, Maxwell, feel free to storm on out of here the same way you stormed right in.”
His expression went blank before he squared his stance toward her desk and clasped his hands together behind his back. At attention. Patient. Vigilant. Waiting on the word of his Roth-Da’al, because that was his only way of relating to her that didn’t drive him insane.
Rebecca recognized the predicament very well.
If she waited any longer to get at least some of this out of the way, the rising complications between them would only multiply and grow.
Finally, she stopped pacing and leaned back against the edge of her desk, feeling like herself enough to entertain this unthinkable conversation.
But still not quite enough to justify getting comfy for this just to bare the parts of her soul and her past she’d wished for so long she could have chopped away like a dead limb endangering the health of the rest of the tree.
Just enough to give him what he thought he wanted.
Just enough to satisfy the need.
“You’re right,” she said, tipping her head with a sigh of release as she prepared to continue with the rest of it. “About all of it.”
Maxwell’s rigid positioning shifted upon hearing her begin. Though Rebecca couldn’t quite look at him yet, she felt the shifter softening at her words despite his desperation to hear more.
At least she’d started the right way.
“I did recognize him the second I looked inside that holding room,” Rebecca continued. “Though I hadn’t known if I would. It had been so long since I’d seen him, and honestly, I hadn’t planned to ever see him again.”
“How long?”
The sudden gentleness in his voice prompting her for more filled her with an ache of longing she didn’t quite understand. Not the same longing for Maxwell brought on by their connection, or for anything else in her present life she could pinpoint.
It only occurred to her a second later that longing and grief were close cousins.
He’d asked how long it had been since she’d last seen Rowan, but if Rebecca gave him a number, she’d also be giving away far more about her true age than seemed safe.
With that pain of longing and grief still swimming in her eyes, she looked up at the shifter and could only respond with, “A lifetime.”
And it wasn’t a lie. She’d lived several lifetimes since then.
“Rowan and I were raised together. Grew up together. And at one point, we fought together. Hannigan, there are certain things our families, our people , expected from us, and the longer I tried to be what they made me believe I had to be, the harder I fought against it.”
His eyebrows twitched upward before he murmured, “No surprise there. But you still haven’t answered my question. Who was he to you ?”
As soon as he asked the question, Maxwell approached her again with slow, measured steps. The energy growing between them flared in response, filling Rebecca with a surge of temptation, and closeness, and the promise of dark need and hunger she hadn’t felt with anyone but herself. And now him.
Dammit, was he purposefully using this bond against her to make her keep talking?
He was only three feet away from her now, and Rebecca was helpless in her attempts not to look at him.
Who was Rowan to her?
“That doesn’t have a simple answer,” she replied cautiously.
He leaned closer, his gaze impenetrable. “I didn’t ask for simple answers.”
Once more trapped in his gaze, Rebecca felt all her protective barriers—all her determination to keep the past in the past, all her resistance to opening up to anyone—tremble on their foundations and crack beneath Maxwell’s insistence.
Beneath his closeness, the heat radiating off his body like she was inches away from burning up inside a star.
Beneath his all-consuming need to know the truth and to hear it from her lips.
Their connection kept her from lying to him, but she couldn’t have withheld a response now even if she’d tried.
It was so much easier to stop trying.
“To me ,” she began, “Rowan Blackmoon was once my best friend. My only friend. A single point of light orbiting a world of darkness. My life.”
A shaky sigh escaped her. “But in my home, my life wasn’t my own. Neither was his.”
By the Blood, she was actually going to say it, wasn’t she?
“What everyone else wanted took precedence over whoever I might have thought I wanted to be. It was the same for him. Almost from the very beginning, Rowan Blackmoon and I were supposed to have been—”
A loud, urgent knock on the office door ripped the rest of Rebecca’s confession out of her mouth and tore it to shreds.
“Knox?”
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Maxwell snarled, then tore away from Rebecca to stomp out his frustration across the room, growling and pacing again like a caged animal just waiting for the right moment to pounce.
“Not now!” Rebecca shouted through her own frustration. Her tightened with a painfully heavy grip around her lungs at Maxwell’s sudden departure.
They were having this conversation right now. It had to be done and anything else could wait.
But the door to her office opened anyway with a soft creak before Rick poked his head in, his eyes wide.
Rebecca whirled around to glare at him. “ Rick . Did I not say it loud enough?”
“No, you did. I heard you. I’m real sorry, boss, but you really wanna see this. Like right now.”