72. The Stranger
Chapter Seventy-Two
The Stranger
T he call from her reverberates through my body, summoning me from my home to the meadow. She’s summoning me? Something must be wrong.
“Princess?” I call softly, surprised to find her alone and unharmed in the clearing.
She glances at me, her arms wrapped around her middle, warding off an unseen blow. “Please. Please leave me alone.”
“Princess,” I repeat, closing the distance and grasping her arm gently.
She yanks away, her eyes cornered and alert. “If you listen to me just fucking once , please, can it be now? Go away.”
Yet her words belie the way I can feel her power radiating from her, calling to me, begging me to come closer. Does she not feel it? Is she not aware of what she’s done?
“If you listen to me once, know that you called me here,” I say gently, cupping her cheeks, trying to reach her.
She freezes, her bright eyes blinking up at me. So she wasn’t aware. She shakes her head, denying it, denying me, but I brush her hair back, nodding instead. She whimpers softly, closing her eyes.
“Please stop?.?.?.” I move closer, looming over her. “Why are you here? Why are you always here?”
“You called me,” I repeat, knowing the question was mostly rhetorical. She’ll deny it, of course. She’ll deny any and everything that might hint at us having something more lasting between us .
She pulls away, her eyes misting, making them glow an icy blue in the dim forest. “Why can’t I get rid of you?” she demands. “I just fucked Max, and you’re still here. Why? Move on. I don’t want you.”
“Yet you called me,” I state again, brushing away a tear that slides down her cheek.
Even after fucking her berserker, foolishly thinking that would be enough, that it would keep her from seeking me out, she couldn’t deny the connection between us.
No more than I could deny it last year. No matter how much I hated the hold she had on me, hated her control over me.
“No I didn’t!” she stubbornly insists. “What the fuck do I have to do to get you away from me? Do I need to get engaged, married, have a kid?”
As if those distractions would somehow lessen our connection. I brush away another tear that falls from her eyes. She sobs and hits my chest with her fists as I gather her close. “Stop wanting me. Stop watching me. Stop forgiving me. I’m not fucking yours.”
She continues to sob until she collapses into me. She clings to my shirt, and I cuddle her against my chest, letting her shatter against me. I move to lift her into my arms, but she tenses and looks up, shaking her head. “I don’t want to go to your house.”
“We can stay right here,” I say, lifting her against me and wrapping her legs around my waist. Cupping the back of her head in my hand, I guide her face into my neck. “Right here, princess.”
She nods and nuzzles her face against my throat as she sobs.
I hold her, stroking her hair, letting her know without words that if she breaks, I’ll hold the pieces of her together.
I don’t know how long we stay like that, and it doesn’t really matter, but as her sobs slow, she pulls back and looks up at me.
Tenderly, I brush her tears from her cheek, but otherwise I don’t acknowledge them.
“Why won’t you leave me alone?” she whispers brokenly.
“Because you haunt me just as much as I do you.” I scan her eyes. “If not more so. You may feel I’m the ghost who haunts your steps, but you are the phantom of my entire life.”
“That is not an explanation.” She stiffens, struggling in my hold until I put her down on her feet. “I don’t seek you out.”
She does, but pretends she doesn’t.
“You don’t have to. I can’t stop thinking about you, even when I don’t want to. I dream of you. I smell you. Everywhere I look, I sense the ghost of you. ”
She bristles but still clings to me. “That has nothing to do with me.”
“It has everything to do with you,” I correct.
“How can you still hold me when I’ve just fucked someone else?” She tightens her hold on my shirt. “How can you still want to be around me?”
She asks this because somewhere in her heart and soul, she knows she’d never forgive me if the roles were reversed.
“Because I’m forced to be patient. To know that even as you go to others, it will always be you and me at the end.”
Our breaths and hearts are synchronized, beating and breathing for each other, both strengthening and weakening the other.
Beginning and end.
“I was going to marry Connor,” she whispers, shaking her head.
I cup her cheek, trying to make her understand. “No, you weren’t.”
She snarls, slapping my hands away, backing up. “Yes I was. I love Connor. He was the one for me. The only one.”
“Yet you hid parts of yourself from him,” I growl, my eyes narrowed. “Parts you wished would disappear.”
She flinches, putting more space between us. “How could you?.?.?.” She shakes her head, her eyes glowing with anger. “Fuck you. Fuck your oath.”
I grab her arm, knowing she is going to run, just like she always does when she is confronted with the truths she doesn’t want to face. “How could I know? Because you showed them to me. Because I lived the same life. I hid and broke myself into little pieces to make those around me happy.”
She snarls more, her lips curling back from her teeth. “If you truly knew, how could you throw that back at me? I trusted you.” Her eyes flash with anger. “And every fucking second, I wish it was you who had died.”
I release my hold on her and step back, staring at her, letting those words sit between us.