Jessica Andersen - Dawnkeepers

“Doubtful. At least, not the way you’re thinking.” She took a steadying breath. “I’m in love with you.”

Of all the things Nate had expected her to say, that wouldn’t have even made the list.

I’m in love with you. The words rocketed around in his brain, bouncing off one another without making any real sense. Not just because he hadn’t expected to hear them from her, though he hadn’t, and not because he’d never realized she’d been headed in that direction, even though that was true too

. . . but because he hadn’t heard those words strung together with that meaning and tossed in his direction before.

Not ever.

He had every reason now to believe that his parents had loved him, and no doubt they’d told his infant self so repeatedly. But he had no memory of those times, didn’t remember even a hint of his parents. His earliest memories were of foster homes stuffed with too many kids, run by adults who’d spent the foster stipends on themselves and left the kids to fend. Sure, there had been one or two good families, ones he would’ve stayed with if given the choice. But he’d been moved along instead, and the opportunities for “I love you” had dwindled with the years. It wasn’t the sort of thing he’d heard in juvie, wasn’t the sort of thing he’d wanted to hear in prison, where he’d learned more than he’d ever wanted to know about sex as a commodity. Since then he’d had a string of relationships, again growing fewer and farther between as the years went on and he’d poured himself into the business . . . and his obsession with his fantasy woman, Hera, who was nothing more than a two-dimensional, watered-down version of Alexis herself, whose face fell progressively as he just stood there, staring, vapor-locked by her declaration.

Then she smiled, only it was one of acceptance rather than hope. “Yeah. That’s about what I figured. You can’t say I didn’t warn you.”

She turned and started walking, and he was so jammed up in his own head that she was most of the way to the residential wing before he unglued his feet from the damn floor and went after her. He caught her arm. “Alexis, wait.”

She turned back and fisted her hands on her hips, and though there was hurt and resignation in her eyes, he didn’t see any tears, which made him feel both better and worse at the same time: better because he didn’t think he could’ve handled it if she cried; worse because it meant she’d expected exactly the reaction he’d given her.

“It’s okay, Nate. My feelings, my problem.” There were tears in her voice, though, which made him feel like crap.

“They’re not a problem,” he said, because that was the gods’ honest truth. “I just . . . I need time to process. I’ve never . . .” He fumbled the delivery, not sure he wanted her to know that the whole love thing was something he understood in theory, but not in practice or reality.

“Like I said, it’s okay. But if you don’t mind, I’d like to hit my rooms and unwind. It’s been a hell of a day.”

“Understatement of the year,” he said faintly, still not sure what he was supposed to do or say. He knew he’d blown the moment, but didn’t know how badly; knew he wanted to do better, but wasn’t sure how. “I just . . . I wasn’t thinking about love or forever. Once we took the gods and destiny and prophecy and all that shit out of the equation, there didn’t seem to be any reason for it, you know?

We’re here for another four years, and either the world’s going to go on after that or it’s not. Either we’re going to have a future or we’re not, you know?”

She swallowed, then nodded. “Yeah, I do know. Thing is, I’ve spent too long living in limbo, waiting to figure out who I am and what I’m supposed to be doing.”

“And you’ve got that figured out now?” He wasn’t asking to be funny, either.

That got a crooked smile out of her. “Some of it, anyway. And loving you is one of the things I’ve figured out. I didn’t mean for it to happen, didn’t want it to. But I woke up next to you this morning and realized I was exactly where I wanted to be, despite everything. I want to be with you, live with you, combine my life with yours. I want to rip out that gods-awful carpet in the cottage and lay down polished oak, and sneak some smoke motifs in among the hawks. I want to wear your jun tan on my arm, and I want you to wear mine. I want us to fight over what Strike and Leah should and shouldn’t do, and leave all that shit at the door, so it’s just the two of us when we’re at home, no gods, no destiny, no prophecy, just a man and a woman in love.” She paused, looking at him, her grin going even more crooked. “And the thought of that scares the living shit out of you.”

“Yeah,” he said, because it did—not just because of what she’d said, but because he could picture a whole bunch of it, and that brought nothing but panic. He didn’t know how to love her, how to be her mate. He didn’t even know if he wanted to do either of those things. He’d been so certain he was going to buck prophecy that he hadn’t even gone there. “I wish I could give you what you want,” he said finally, knowing that was about as lame as it got. “But I can’t say the words when I don’t know what I’m feeling.”

“Well,” she said after a moment, “it’s like I said before: I might not like what you say some of the time—hell, lots of the time—but I know you only say what you’re thinking. In this case, I’d rather hear the truth than have you knee-jerk an ‘I love you’ when what you really mean is, ‘I want us to keep sleeping together.’ So thanks for the honesty, at least.”

“If . . .” He faltered, not sure what he wanted to say, but knowing it couldn’t be good for them to part like this almost exactly forty-eight hours before the vernal equinox, when she and her magic were supposed to play a major role in their very survival. He finally said, “You know I’ll do anything I can to protect you, right? And I mean anything.”

Her smile went sad. “I know. But the thing is, you’ve already proved your point. The gods—or destiny, or whatever—might control some of what’s going on around us, but they don’t control us as people. They don’t control our hearts. I fell for you because of the man you are, not the one you should’ve been. And if the very things that made you who you are mean that you can’t love, or don’t know how to love, or need more time, or just plain don’t love me , then that’s just my bad timing.” She lifted a shoulder, though there were tears in her eyes now, and her voice broke a little when she said, “Another lifetime, maybe.”

She reached up on her tiptoes and touched her lips to his in a kiss that tasted of farewell. And this time when she walked away, he didn’t go after her. He stood there looking after her long after the door to her suite closed quietly behind her, leaving him alone.

And later, when he lay in bed, equally alone, he stared up at the picture of the sea and sky, and realized for the first time that none of his father’s paintings had any people in them.

Alexis had meant to go straight to bed, but once she was inside her suite she found herself prowling the small space, unable to settle. She was tempted to go find Izzy and invite her for a drink, which used to be her normal routine when she was involved in a relationship implosion, whether as the dumper or dumpee. This was different, though. This was the first time she’d gone all the way to “I love you.”

“Go find Izzy,” she told herself. “She’ll talk you out of it.” But that was the problem, really, because she knew the winikin would try to do exactly that. Alexis, though, wasn’t in the mood to be talked out of loving Nate. She wanted to wallow in it, revel in it, and curse him for being an emotionally stunted asshat, who also happened to be gorgeous, intelligent, more or less rational, a strong counterweight to her opinions on the royal council, and an increasingly powerful mage of the sort she wanted at her back during a fight.