He stares at me for several long, inscrutable seconds. His face is blank, his eyes as guarded as I have ever seen them. And I realize that the old Declan is back, the one I met eight years ago and the one I met again eighteen days ago. Not until his reappearance—not until this moment when distance once more yawns between us—did I realize how much Declan has softened in the last couple of weeks. How much he’s let me in.
With that thought comes regret, real, powerful, overwhelming. “Declan—”
“No. Don’t back down now, Xandra. You can’t accuse me of killing Alride, and then take it all back like a bad case of buyer’s remorse.” Without looking at me, he steps into the shower. Starts to wash.
My spine stiffens at his tone. “You don’t have to be obnoxious about it. You’re covered in blood. We just came from a murder scene where the victim was bled out—a victim who you have to admit is on a list of people you have every reason to hate. It’s not so far-fetched for me to imagine that you might have killed him.”
“Not so far-fetched? After everything we talked about yesterday, it’s not so far-fetched?” he repeats as he scrubs himself. The blood is gone. All that’s left of it is the pink-tinged water that is even now circling the drain. Well, that and this conversation. A conversation I wish I’d picked any other day, any other time, to have. It’s not like I’m at my most lucid right now, and, exhausted or not, Declan’s proving to be a lot more adept at arguing than I am.
“Let me get this straight,” he says a couple of minutes later into the silence that yawns between us. He’s shut off the shower, grabbed a towel, and is now in the process of drying himself off. He’s gorgeous like this—all damp and dark and pissed beyond belief. My magic rises within me, responds to him even when my human side is frustrated, furious. Suspicious.
“You’ve been through hell tonight. You’ve had ridiculously awful nightmares that you awake from bruised and battered, you’ve had a seizure—after prolonged agony—in the middle of your kitchen floor, and then you ended up chasing after a dead guy in the middle of the night and reliving his murder, complete with pain and side effects.
“It’s been hell for you to suffer and hell for Lily and me to watch you suffer. And yet you’re going to stand there and accuse me of deliberately doing that to you. Of caring so little about you that I’d let you endure that and not even bother to be here to make sure you were okay.”
“I didn’t say that.”
He prowls toward me and I’ve never been more aware of the spatial limitations of this room more than I am right at this second. Because Declan is all wounded, enraged male animal and I’m the one who caused it. Not to mention the only one currently in his sights. “You said exactly that.”
“No. I didn’t.”
He’s in my face now and I shove against his chest. He doesn’t budge, doesn’t back up, so I have to. Even as tired and messed up as I am right now, I still can’t think when he’s that close to me. “I asked a very legitimate question. I didn’t accuse, I didn’t condemn. I simply asked.”
“If I had killed Alride. If I had disregarded everything I know about you and what being in the general vicinity of murder does to you and just went for it.”
“Not everything’s about me, Declan.”
“Yes, goddamnit, Xandra, it is. In my life, it is all about you. How could you not know that?” He brings a hand up, rests his palm on my shoulder while his fingers gently stroke the line of my neck. It’s a possessive hold at the best of times. Right now, with his onyx eyes blazing into mine, it’s a claiming of the most intimate kind, a declaration of intent that manages to be both comforting and sexy as hell. It’s taking every ounce of strength I have not to give in. Not to just melt against him and say to hell with my suspicions. To hell with anyone or anything that isn’t right here, right now.
“You walked away from me once.”
“You were a child.”
“I was nineteen.”
“You were a child. You didn’t see yourself in that forest. You were terrified, traumatized. What else was I supposed to do?”
“Tell me the truth.”
“Really? I’m telling you the truth now and you don’t believe a word I’m saying.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t believe you.”
“No, but it’s written all over your face.” He puts his hands on my shoulders, pulls me close until his face is only inches from mine. “I didn’t kill those guards. I didn’t kill Alride. And I sure as shit didn’t bleed him dry. I have spent nearly your entire existence trying to protect you. And now that you’re mine, there’s no way I would ever do anything to hurt you like that.”
He steps back and for just a second, his guard drops. I see past the anger to the hurt my accusation has caused him. Remorse fills me, but it’s too late. He’s stepping back, clothing himself with a wave of his hand.
“Get some sleep,” he tells me. “I’ll call you later today.”
Then he’s gone, walking out—walking away from me—without a backward glance. And stupid me, I just stand there and watch him go.
Fourteen
I’m exhausted, but I can’t sleep, can’t do anything but toss and turn as I try to get comfortable despite the bruises. And try to figure out why I was stupid enough to just stand there as Declan walked away.
There’s a part of him that scares me—and a part of who I am when I’m with him that scares me—but that doesn’t make him a murderer. Yes, he lives in shadows and yes, he straddles the line between good and evil every day of his life. And yet, this man, who for so many years has lived on the fringes of eternal darkness, has a more fixed moral code than anyone I know. He sees things, even himself, in black and white. No excuses, no apologies, no such thing as extenuating circumstances. And yet when it comes to me . . . when it comes to me, he isn’t exactly rational. Those lines become even more defined, until anyone who puts so much as a toe over them won’t be tolerated.
The ACW put a whole hell of a lot more over that line than their toes.
Finally giving up on sleep, I push back the covers and stumble into the kitchen for a cup of coffee. Normally I play around a little, foam the milk, make a cappuccino, but today I don’t care about fancy. Don’t even care about taste. I just need a caffeine-delivery vehicle.
Lily stumbles into the kitchen a few minutes after I do. I pour her a cup and hand it to her—a dollop of cream and two sugars, just the way she likes it—and try to decipher the garbled words that come out of her mouth.
“You’re speaking in tongues again,” I tell her, pouring myself a second cup of coffee.
She flips me off, then goes back to mainlining her coffee. Finally, after another cup and five minutes of total and absolute silence, she pins me with eyes that are surprisingly bright and sharp after the night we had.
“Why did Declan leave last night?”
Trust Lily to cut right to the chase. “We had a difference of opinion.”
“You argued? How the hell did you have the energy left to form words, let alone argue?”
“It wasn’t an argument so much as a total inability to merge life philosophies.”
“At four in the morning?” She stares at me incredulously. “After everything that happened last night? What gave you the idea that you could merge anything, let alone life philosophies? What the hell is wrong with you?”
And that’s one of the many reasons I love my best friend so much. She has a way of putting things in perspective without even knowing she’s doing it.
“I freaked out. Completely lost my mind, I think.”
“Do tell.” She gets up and pours herself a third cup of coffee, then reaches into the top cupboard for the secret stash of mini chocolate doughnuts. She doles out four of them for each of us because “It’s definitely a four-doughnut morning.”