Chapter 8 Totally Fcked Is the New （Para）Normal
“I’ve got to say,” Grace comments after a full ten minutes of walking barely gets us to the next mile marker. “This whole ‘normal’ human thing is a total drag.”
“Says the girl who thought she was one of those ‘normal’ humans less than six months ago,” I counter.
“Yeah, well, a lot can change in six months.”
She shoots me an arch look, but I just shake my head and answer, “Bloody true story, that.”
Grace laughs, but this time it sounds awkward. So awkward, in fact, that I glance at her out of the corner of my eye, just to gauge what she’s thinking—or feeling.
But it turns out she’s doing the same thing to me, and our gazes catch. Hold.
Just like that, I forget to breathe.
She tries to look away—I can see it in the way her eyelashes twitch, the way she ducks her chin and leans forward.
It doesn’t work. Her eyes stay pinned to mine so long that I don’t just forget to breathe—I forget how to breathe. A problem that it seems like she’s having, too, judging from the way she’s gone completely still.
The need to touch her has become an all-consuming ache inside me, this girl who doesn’t remember anything about me but whose body—whose soul—remembers enough to mate with me.
I start to reach for her, to brush the curls away from her face and skate my knuckles down her cheek like I’ve done so many times before.
I go so far as to lift my hand before it hits me that, mate or not, she hasn’t given me the right to touch her like that. Worse, she may never give me that right.
The thought breaks the spell or whatever it is that arcs and trembles between us, and I shove my hands in my pockets as added protection against temptation.
Grace, in turn, breaks eye contact as she takes an unsteady step backward. Then another and another, until she stumbles off the shoveled road and onto the snow-packed earth.
She throws a hand out to steady herself and as she does, her fingertips grab on to the sleeve of my hoodie. Ridiculous as I know it is, my biceps starts to burn where she touches—even with two thick layers of clothes between her fingers and my skin.
“Are you all right?” I ask as she slowly lets go of me.
“I’m fine.” She forces a rusty-sounding laugh. “Sorry, I still haven’t gotten as used to the snow as I should have.”
“You don’t ever have to apologize to me,” I tell her.
“I don’t think that’s true.”
“It is,” I insist, but she just shakes her head.
“I’m pretty sure I owe you several apologies right now.”
“For what?” I ask, then hate myself for showing that I care. Nearly as much as I hate myself for the hope deep inside me that bursts free from the stranglehold I’ve kept on it for the last three days.
“For a lot of things,” she whispers. “For starters, for forgetting what you obviously need me to remember.”
“It’s okay,” I tell her, because for the first time, it feels like it might be. “I can wait.”
“That’s just it. I don’t want you to wait.
I don’t want either of us to wait like this, in some kind of weird limbo.
I just want to know what happened during those months we were locked together.
Were we really friends? Were we more than friends?
And if we were, how did it happen? Why did it happen when I was obviously still mated to Jaxon? ”
My heart is racing like a forest fire, but I fight to keep my voice steady as I ask, “Do you want me to answer your questions?”
“Yes!” she tells me, her voice filled with determination. Then, seconds later, she says, “No!” just as enthusiastically. “Ugh, I don’t know! That’s the whole problem, isn’t it? I want to know, but knowing won’t really change anything.”
It’s not quite the answer I was hoping for, but I try to unravel it as slowly and carefully as I can. “Won’t it?”
“Of course not!” She throws up her hands.
“Because even if you tell me, it won’t change anything.
Because no matter what you say happened, I won’t remember it.
No matter what you say I felt, I don’t still feel it.
So will it actually help anything if I know?
Or will it just make everything harder—for both of us? ”
She’s asking good questions, logical questions.
And still it feels like she’s ripping my heart out all over again.
Because she’s right. Just because I tell her what we did, just because I tell her how we felt and how it happened, doesn’t mean she’ll feel it all over again.
No matter how many things I say—no matter how many stories I tell or months I span—it won’t be the same as if she remembered.
It won’t be the same as if we were living it together, one day, one minute at a time.
But it’s no better living like this, waiting for her to remember. Waiting for her to understand why we’re mated. To understand why she loves me.
And she does still love me, somewhere deep inside her.
If she didn’t, the mating bond wouldn’t have sprung into place the same day her bond with Jaxon broke. If she didn’t, I wouldn’t still be here, hanging on—not in limbo, as she suggests, but in hell—waiting for her to love me back.
If she didn’t, I would know.
And so I don’t do what every instinct inside me is screaming for me to do. I don’t tell her what happened between us, and I definitely don’t tell her about how she promised to love me forever.
Instead, I take a step back and say, “Okay.”
“What do you mean, okay?” She looks startled.
But I just shrug. “I mean okay. Those are good points. I won’t tell you any of it.”
“None of it?” she asks, and now she sounds incredulous. And more than a little annoyed.
I don’t know why the annoyance makes me feel better, but it does. So I shrug nonchalantly as I agree, “None of it.” Then I nod toward Denali. “We really should get moving if we’re going to get up the mountain in time for the bonfire.”
“The bonfire?” she repeats, offense dripping from every word. “You’re worried about the bonfire right now?”
“Actually, what I’m really worried about is getting a bloody sunburn,” I tell her with a grin. “But yeah, I like bonfires. So let’s go.”
“Let’s go? Just like that?”
“No offense, but you’re beginning to sound like a parrot.” I know I’m smiling an inappropriate amount considering the things she just said, but I can’t help it.
What started off as a way to save face is turning into so much more. Namely a chance to see that Grace wants answers even if she doesn’t think she does. More, she wants to understand what we feel for each other—what we are to each other, independent of my pain-in-the-arse brother.
And that feels pretty good to me, not to mention to my bruised, battered, and bloodied heart.
“And you’re beginning to sound like—” She bites off the words and, judging from the strangled sound she makes deep in her throat, practically bites off her tongue along with them.
Eventually, though, she takes a deep breath and says, “Fine. Let’s go.
I’m sure everyone is worried about us, and it’s not like I can get any service out here anyway. ”
She takes off down the street like the hounds of hell are after her. I follow close behind, and we end up walking in silence for several more minutes. Or, to be more precise, I walk. Grace marches, with her chin in the air, all the way through town.
Eventually we get to the forested outskirts of Healy, and we leave the road for the first time in an effort to get into the trees, where we can stop pretending not to be paranormals. “If we cut through here—and you fly low—we should make it back to school pretty quickly,” I tell her.
At first, I don’t think she’s going to answer me, but then she does with a quick cut of her eyes to mine and then away. “How fast is ‘pretty quickly’?”
“I don’t know.” But since she sounds like she’s almost back to normal, I decide to push my luck. “Wanna race?”
At first I think she’s going to ignore me, but then she laughs despite herself. “I may not have learned much at Katmere yet, but I do know better than to race a vampire anywhere.”
“I promise to cut my speed in half.”
“Oh, do you now?” Grace looks more than a little skeptical.
“I do,” I answer. “But I also know a shortcut. So we’ll see if you can keep up.”
“Oh, I can keep up,” she answers, and there’s a sudden look of recognition in her eyes that has my heart beating triple-time once again.
This isn’t the first time we’ve had this conversation. It isn’t even the tenth time. And for just a moment, I can’t help thinking that she knows it. That even if she doesn’t remember everything, she remembers this one thing.
But the recognition is gone as quickly as it came, and then she’s taking off without so much as a warning. Just like always, because apparently some things never change. The cheater.
“See you at Katmere!” she calls down to me with a laugh, right before she starts flying straight up the side of the mountain as fast as her wings can carry her.
I can beat her—of that, I have no doubt.
But despite the challenge I just issued, I’m not interested in racing ahead of her at all.
Partly because I want to keep an eye on her and partly because it’s fun to be out here, racing through the snow.
My mate is above me, the wind is at my back, and for just a little while, my world feels like it’s been set to rights.