34. Second Chances Don’t Come Cheap
Second Chances Don’t Come Cheap
‘What if I can’t?’ The words seem to echo in the space around us.
It’s not that I think I would be the worst sort of person to go straight from the arms of one man to another. I love Micah, and I always have.
But I still love Jake. It’s only been a few hours, and he was angry.
Werewolf emotions are more intense than human ones.
They simmer below the surface, ready to erupt, and I know Jake struggles with them.
If he hadn’t broken up with me, and Micah said all these things to me tonight, what would I tell him? What would I choose?
‘Then I’ll wait.’ He makes it sound so simple.
‘I don’t understand.’ It’s all I ever wanted, but it’s too much.
He can’t say all these things to me, as if the past never happened.
I offered him my whole heart that night seven years ago, not just my body.
I can never forget the way he recoiled from me.
The look of horror on his face as he raked his gaze over me, standing in his bedroom in the red lingerie I bought for him.
I can feel the rush of humiliation even now, and I need to understand.
‘You didn’t want me,’ I whisper. Finally, I let him see what it did to me. What he did to me when he stood there silently until my body was on fire from embarrassment, and I ran from his bedroom.
Micah stares as if he’s never seen me before. He’s an immortal Vampire, thousands of years old, and he’s struggling to find words. I try to pull away, to put some distance between us, but his arms are steel bands. The room feels too hot, too small.
‘You think I didn’t want you?’ He’s incredulous, his gaze flickering between my eyes, seeking the truth.
‘You stood there and said nothing. I was practically naked, offering myself to you on a platter, and you looked at me as if it was the worst thing anyone had ever done.’ All of my emotions, bottled and unspoken for seven years, pour out like poison from a wound as I shake from anger instead of humiliation.
I struggle against him, pushing at his chest and arms. I hate him for acting as if he had no idea how I felt, as if I’d imagined it all.
‘Evangeline, stop.’ It’s a command in a voice I rarely hear from him. ‘For fuck’s sake, let me explain.’ He lets me go abruptly and steps back, holding out his hands, palms up. ‘Please.’
I’m not used to seeing him like this, so unsure, as if this matters to him. It’s what I’ve wanted for seven years. I have to listen, even if I don’t like what I hear.
‘I handled that night very badly.’ He grimaces, running a hand through his midnight hair. Both such human gestures, my heart thaws a fraction. ‘It’s not an excuse, but I wasn’t expecting it. You took me by surprise.’
I’m staring at him, and…I can’t blame him for all of it.
It’s been easier to do that. Easier for me to hide behind my anger, to stop me from asking for his memory, his side of what happened that night.
But nothing happens in a vacuum. I finally admit the truth to myself: I was afraid that if I acknowledged my part in it, I would come back here, to him.
‘It wasn’t all on you,’ I force myself to meet his eyes. ‘Clearly, I got some things into my head that weren’t true.’ I want to shrink away from the discomfort of this conversation. To call it even and leave it in the past. ‘It doesn’t matter now.’
‘It matters to me,’ Micah says with an intensity I wasn’t expecting.
He seems to realize we’re standing in the middle of the room.
Taking my hand, he leads me to the seating area beyond the table where I ate a dinner that already feels like a lifetime ago.
Sitting smoothly on the couch, Micah pulls me sideways onto his lap as if afraid that if he’s not holding me, I’ll run away.
Burying his face in my neck, he breathes in deeply.
I want to hold him there, but I can’t. There’s more to be said.
‘I never had the chance to apologize. To make things right.’ He pulls back so he can see me, his onyx eyes a swirling vortex of too much emotion.
His hold on my waist tightens as I flinch. I’m not sure how he thinks he could have made it right. I threw myself at him, and he didn’t want me. Talking about it would have compounded the devastation, the humiliation, the shattering of my teenage fantasies.
‘You left the castle. After.’ I don’t mean to make it an accusation, but it comes out that way. I’m unsure if I’m more confused or angry at his words.
The surprise he doesn’t try to hide confuses me even more. I feel wrong-footed, off balance. As if everything I remember happening is a few degrees off from reality.
‘Not because of you.’ His hands slide up my ribs in a caress that distracts me.
‘Is that what you thought all this time? Evangeline, I had Coven business that couldn’t wait.
I’d been informed by Lila of an issue that she’d tried to work out, but now needed my immediate attention.
I left too much to her as it was. When I came into my bedroom to change, there you were, like every dream I’d ever had. ’
My perspective slips again. The attraction I was sure he felt hadn’t all been in my head. The horror I thought I saw, the blank face after, the silence- I’d taken him by surprise when he was distracted.
‘I wanted to give you space. When I came back two days later, you were gone.’ One of his hands is on the bare skin of my back where my dress dips, the other burning a hole through the fabric at my waist. I haven’t moved, hands clenched in my lap, afraid of what will happen if I touch him.
‘I was humiliated. My teenage dream shattered.’ I smile wryly, but my eyes are determinedly level with his bow tie.
Micah tips my chin up with one finger, forcing me to look into his eyes. They glitter with stars and understanding and apology. With the vastness of eternity and a promise I can’t decipher.
‘You could have come after me.’ It’s a whisper, but it’s not tentative, not weak.
I’m different when I’m with him, and it’s not a bad thing.
I love my job and being a detective. Facing down criminals, finding truth, and building bridges between dangerous Paranormal communities gives me satisfaction.
I love how strong and fierce and bold I’ve become.
But with Micah, I don’t have to be all of those things all the time.
I can let my guard down and show the softer parts of myself, which I also love.
‘I thought you needed space.’ Somehow, he manages to shrug with me pressed against him.
His hands on me are a distraction, and I need to think clearly. I shift away a fraction.
‘Two weeks later, you joined the Police Academy, and I didn’t want to distract you.’
As soon as I turned twenty, I enrolled, and it was the distraction I needed from my shattered heart. But…
‘It’s been seven years.’
Pulling out of his arms, I almost throw myself out of his lap.
Untangling myself without falling to the floor, I straighten my skirt and shift to the far side of the couch.
Why does this prick at me so much after all this time?
I feel as if I put a band-aid on a wound when what was needed was open-heart surgery.
‘I heard about your plans, and they were brilliant, Evangeline,’ Micah tells me, and I hear pride in his voice, see it on his face. He doesn’t try to move closer, keeping his distance, honoring the space I’ve carved between us.
The stars in his eyes gutter as he rakes a hand through his hair and tugs at his bow tie, as if it’s suddenly too tight, too restrictive. It unravels, and he throws it aside, undoing the top two buttons of his shirt.
‘You needed to have a normal life. I’m immortal. I have all the time in the world, and I didn’t want to interrupt your dreams.’ His voice is smooth bourbon and silk sheets and dark decadence.
I’m just staring at him, my hands limp in my lap. I’m not sure what I expected him to say, but it wasn’t this. This selflessness, this care for my needs; that he would never put his wants, his desires, above my dreams.
His face tightens. ‘And then you started seeing the Wolf.’ He almost snarls the last word, fangs flashing as he leans closer.
‘So you stayed away and sent Lila to liaise with me in your place, because I had a Werewolf boyfriend?’ It’s such a human thing to do. He was jealous, and I can’t help the thrill that shoots through me at the realization.
For the first time since this conversation began, his face shutters completely, like a perfectly carved statue.
‘What should I have done, Evangeline? You could have come to me at any time. I thought you wanted nothing to do with me. Should I have inserted myself into your life again?’ His voice is as cold as his eyes.
‘Yes,’ I yell, my temper slipping its tightly held leash.
Because for seven years, every moment of every day, in the deepest, most secret part of my soul, I hoped he would find me. Explain. Tell me that night was a terrible mistake. That he had wanted me. And I’ve pretended, for just as long, that I didn’t want it.
‘I moved on. And it almost killed me to do it.’ I heave in breath after breath, clenching my hands so I don’t hit him and break one.
‘You saved me, helped me pick up the pieces of my broken life, to dream again. You made me want to live, gave me a new family. Even when we had to leave the Coven, when it was just us and Barclay, I still felt part of something special. I was wanted. That night, I was hurt and humiliated, and I ran. But you didn’t come after me.
I waited and waited, and you never came!
You broke my heart all over again, and I was alone. ’
I’m almost sobbing the words out, tears streaming down my cheeks, blurring my vision.
I can’t see Micah’s expression. He’s as still as one of the famous statues he looks like as I pour out my shattered heart, my broken soul.
It feels as if I’m nineteen again, offering him every part of me. I’m beyond raw, split open.
He moves so fast I don’t see it until his arms are steel bands around me, holding me as if I’m infinitely precious.
‘I loved you,’ I whisper into his neck. I need to speak the truth after all this time.
‘I loved you too,’ he says into my hair, threading his hands through it and tilting my head back so I have to look at him, to see the truth of his words echoed in his star-flecked eyes.
Still, I think I must have misheard him. Then the words he spoke earlier start to sink in. He was trying to tell me he had loved me back then, and I hadn’t understood.
‘You loved me?’ My voice is shaky and unsure as he wipes the tears from my cheeks with his thumbs as he cups my face.
‘From the first moment I saw you, I’ve been consumed by you. The most difficult thing I’ve ever done was to hide it from you.’ His eyes glow with midnight fire, hair gilded in the lights, shadows playing across his beautiful face cast in bronze.
‘But…,’ I trail off. It still doesn’t make sense. If he loved me, why did he reject me?
‘I was ashamed.’ His eyes slide away from mine as he lets me go. With an exhale, he rakes a hand through his hair in agitation or embarrassment. Except Micah Saint James is never embarrassed. Or agitated. Or unsure. Nor does he mess his hair up as much as he’s doing tonight.
‘Ashamed of what?’ I’m back to being confused, my heart fluttering like a hummingbird beneath my ribcage.
‘For wanting you so much. I almost threw caution to the wind that night. I almost took your future out of pure selfishness.’ He grinds the words out.
‘You were fucking nineteen years old. I have lived dozens of lifetimes. You had barely begun to live one.’ He stops to breathe in sharply, and I can’t form thoughts, let alone words.
‘I knew your dreams and your plans. Can you honestly say that if I’d told you that night that I loved you, you would still have wanted to join the police? ’
Oh God, he was right. I would have thrown it all away, given it up for him. And I would have wanted to. I would have asked him to Turn me and never, not for a single second of all eternity, regretted it.
‘I would have said yes.’ Micah reads my mind. ‘One lifetime with you will never be enough.’
He’s starkly beautiful, a statue carved from marble, gilded in light and contrasted by shadow.
‘In all my years, I have never wanted anyone as much as I wanted you, Evangeline.’ Every time he says my name, it’s a caress over my skin, a balm to my heart and soul. I hear the hidden meaning in it that’s always been there. ‘I would have sold my soul to have you. To make you mine.’
‘Micah, what do you want?’ Leaning into him, I ask again, our chests almost pressed together.
His face tilts down until our lips are a breath apart.
‘Tell me you’re mine.’