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“This isn’t the way to work things out,” I complain as I pull away, my eyes lifting to his face again, pain stabbing through me to see those marks.
Again, his expression softens, and he strokes his finger along the line of my jaw.
“Ezra wasn’t the problem, though. So if you need to kill anyone, it’s me. I started this back at Tanner’s house.”
“Right in front of me. I remember.”
He doesn’t say anything immediately, his amber eyes searching my face, sorrow bleeding behind his gaze. That and regret...and acceptance.
The last part I can live with, but I never wanted Damon to feel pain. It’s what I’ve fought all these years to avoid. He deserves so much better.
“There’s a lot you don’t know. We should go inside and talk about it.”
I nod my head and let him take my hand to lead me inside the house. We both head back to my room, and when he drops his weight onto my bed, I sit down next to him.
Damon doesn’t say anything at first, just stares at me as if memorizing all the details of my face, as if taking the last look at a person he loves. He sighs when he reaches forward to tuck a stray hair behind my ear.
“I was angry Ezra was treating you so badly, and I made a deal with him to stay away from you. To be done, like he said a while back. He broke the deal, and that’s why I attacked him at Tanner’s. I saw you walk in behind him and lost it. I didn’t think about what it would do to you. So don’t hold that against him.”
Interesting...
“And today? Who started thatconversation?”
He grins. “We never finished the one from Tanner’s.”
My eyes widen. “You’ve been fighting for the past week?”
“Not like you think, Red. Seriously, put down the knife.”
“I don’t have a knife.”
“You looked like you were about to jump up and grab one,” he jokes, the humor in his expression fading into that damn sorrow I can’t stop seeing in him. “Ezra told me you two are together. And I’m here to tell you I’m okay with it.
My breath hitches in my lungs. Obviously I knew the truth would come out eventually, but I didn’t expect Ezra to run home immediately to do this. Then again, it’s just like him to rush forward and attack whatever he considers to be an issue.
“I’m sorry.”
He shrugs. “You can’t help who you love.”
Somehow I know he’s talking more about himself than me.
He blinks, his eyes capturing mine in a soft hold. Damon has never been like Ezra, at least not with me.
That’s not to say some other woman won’t some day pull raw, undeniable and breathtaking possession out of this man, I just wasn’t the one to do it.
I’m not sure he knows that, though. And now is not the time to discuss it. But there will come a day when he meets someone he won’t be willing to let go. Someone he would fight to the death to hold onto.
I’m both jealous and worried for that woman. She’ll have no idea what she’s getting herself into.
Hopefully the love he feels for me will become a close friendship, a familial bond where the comfort I can give him is still possible.
For now, though, he has to learn to nurse and heal a broken heart. Ezra and I both will have to be careful to remember that when we’re around him.
Leaning over, he plants a soft kiss to my cheek, a breath blowing over his lips so full of restrained sorrow that it’s killing me to feel it. Damon might be telling me he accepts Ezra and me being together, but he’s not unaffected by it.
It’s just something we’ll all have to work through. I can’t keep running away.
Still, there is one other thing I need to worry about with him. Something nobody has told Ezra. Not the full story, at least.