20. Bertram
Bertram
The moment Helena exited the tent, Bertram smacked himself in the forehead. Hard.
“Stupid. Stupid!”
It wasn’t the fact that he had said, “my pleasure,” to her; it was a simple enough slip to say a polite phrase by rote.
The problem was that he had meant it.
Losing V-1 had been heartbreaking, devastating, and traumatic. If anything could come close to a silver lining on one of the worst nights of his life, Bertram thought that it had to be spending the night with Helena in his arms.
He didn’t want that to be the case. He didn’t want to feel comforted by holding her.
But there was no denying that he was.
She was so fucking beautiful that it made Bertram ache just to look at her. Even in her sleep, drooling slightly, sniffling through her nose, still stuffy from her sobbing, she was breathtaking.
And that was the problem.
She was back in his arms, back on his mind, and if he wasn’t careful, she would burrow her way back into his heart.
How could she not, when her tears for the owl-bear were every bit as beautiful as her bright eyes and upturned nose and round face and soft curves? How could he not fall back in love with her compassionate soul and quick mind and dirty jokes?
But she had broken his heart thoroughly once, and she could do it again.
It was hard to keep remembering how horrible Helena had made him feel when she made him feel so not horrible every time she looked at him. It was hard to remember how she had made him feel like a villain when she kept looking at him like he was her hero.
He had to stop thinking like that.
Helena had made it clear where she stood when she left for medical school.
She had said in no uncertain terms that saving human lives was the most important thing to her.
Bertram wasn’t human. He would never be human. He didn’t think she had wanted him to be human.
But then she told him that nothing mattered as much as human life, and then she just left him. Gave up everything they had together, everything they were. Gave up everything he thought her dreams had been.
Bertram wasn’t good enough for her, because he wasn’t human enough for her.
Five years had passed since that last, horrible fight before she left, but Bertram hadn’t become any more human. That would never change.
And yes, maybe Helena’s viewpoints had changed. She certainly didn’t treat him as any kind of lesser being—although she hadn’t before that night, either, so that didn’t necessarily mean anything.
And that was the whole point—nothing Helena said or did meant anything.
She could tell Bertram that he was the most important Person in the world to her one day and then act like he wasn’t even a Person at all the next. That’s who Helena was. He had to remember that. Had to keep her at arm’s length, not wrapped tightly within his arms.
She had felt so good wrapped in his arms . . .
But it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter!
Bertram was finished with Helena.
He didn’t care if Helena emerged from the shower fully naked and threw herself onto her knees, begging Bertram to take her back; he would still deny her—
Great. Now Bertram was imaging Helena begging naked on her knees. Strangely, it was not helping rid him of untoward thoughts about her.
But he needed to. It was one thing to let Helena back into his bed—strictly not like that—but letting her into his good graces put him at much greater risk.
He was going to need a distraction, and fast. Or else he might forget how to hate her.