18. Chapter 18 #3
The reasonable cadence of his was the problem.
Had he raised his voice, pressed too hard, let ego or temper show, I could have shoved back cleanly.
Instead, he sat there in firelight and early fall sun, composed as a priest with excellent tailoring, and gave every appearance of a man speaking from thoughtful concern rather than ambition.
“Sometimes,” he said, “dreams show us what we want most. Sometimes they show us what we are afraid to want. And sometimes—especially when we are already hurting—they show us the shape of a desire we know, somewhere underneath ourselves, would wound us further if indulged.”
I hated how much sense that made at first blush.
He watched me while I didn’t answer.
“There is pain already attached to this,” he said more quietly. “Whatever lies between you and him has not brought you peace.”
My jaw tightened. “That’s not all his fault.”
“Perhaps not.”
“And you don’t get to stand there,”—I corrected myself with a glance around the cabin—“sit there and explain my own heart to me.”
“No,” he said again, maddeningly unruffled. “But I may ask whether your heart has served you particularly well in this matter.”
The question landed harder because he framed it as one.
I looked away to the fire.
Nikolay had humiliated me. More than once. He had made me feel small, unwanted, ridiculous for hoping. He had also made French toast. Sent pastries. Chosen a book nobody else would have known enough to choose. Looked at me lately with a softness that made me feel dangerous things all over again.
And then there was the dream.
Goddess, the dream.
My face must have betrayed something because Sage’s voice gentled by a fraction. “I am not asking you to confess anything to me.”
“That’s generous.”
“It is practical.” He took a sip of wine. “A person often hears their own mind more clearly when they are not being pressed.”
There it was again. That maddening veneer of patience and respect that left me arguing not with force but with a man’s version of mercy. I did not trust it. I trusted even less that part of me which kept searching it for sincerity and occasionally finding some.
The wine had gone a little to my head by then.
Not enough to blur thought entirely. Enough to soften the edges around it.
The fire had worked its way through the cabin and into my bones.
My body, still carrying last night’s run and this morning’s bad wakefulness, had begun to feel heavy in the pleasant, dangerous way warmth sometimes made possible.
I exhaled slowly. “You know what bothers me?”
“I have some guesses.”
“I’m sure you do.” I stared into my glass. “It’s that you sound reasonable.”
His silence invited more.
“I would almost rather you were an ass about it,” I admitted. “Then at least I’d know where to put my irritation.”
One side of his mouth tilted. “And because I’m not?”
“I have to do the annoying work of deciding whether I’m irritated because you’re wrong or because you’re close enough to right that I don’t like hearing it from you.”
That earned a longer look from him, one with something like respect in it. “That is very honest.”
“Don’t reward me. I’ll stop doing it.”
He gave a low laugh at that, but softly enough not to jostle the moment.
We did not return to the subject directly after that.
Or rather, he let it widen back out into easier ground with such finesse I only noticed because I was watching for it now.
He asked about books. About the kind of music I played in the car when I was driving alone and not trying to impress anybody.
About the first horse I had ever loved and whether I had been sensible enough not to tell the animal all my teenage secrets.
I gave him enough truth to keep the talk moving and withheld enough to reassure myself I still could.
At some point I moved from the chair to the sofa because it sat closer to the fire. At some point after that, he removed his jacket and sat beside me rather than across. Not crowded. Just near enough that the heat of him became another quiet fact in the room.
I should have minded more than I did.
The wool throw ended up over my legs. I did not remember deciding to pull it there.
My eyelids had grown heavy. The wine lay warm and drowsy in my stomach.
I tried to think of Nikolay but could not hold on to the memory of him.
Why was that? Why, when I was with Sage, could I not keep Nikolay near to my heart?
The rhythm of the fire, the long ride, the rise and fall of his voice whenever he answered me or asked something small in return—it all braided together into a kind of lulled suspension.
When my head finally tipped and found his shoulder, I knew it had happened.
I also knew I could move.
I didn’t.
Sage went still for one careful beat, then settled again without comment, as if not startling me mattered more than claiming the moment. The wool of his sweater was warm against my temple. Beneath that, his shoulder was solid.
I breathed once.
Twice.
The last thing I remember clearly was the fire shifting in the hearth and Sage’s quiet stillness beside me while sleep came up and took me.