Page 63 of Bleed the Shadows

I nodded. “It’s in her name. She lives in the apartment on the second floor.”

“You must care about her a lot.”

“I do.”

“What about your parents?” she asked. “Are you close with them too?”

It seemed impossible that Maeve didn’t know what had happened to my parents, but then again, not so impossible after all. I’d ignored her the first time she’d come to stay at the loft, had made it clear I didn’t want to get to know her.

She would have had to be a glutton for punishment to ask me personal questions.

I hesitated. There were a million reasons I didn’t like to talk about my parents. But Cassie told me you couldn’t be close to someone — really close — unless you let people in, and you couldn’t let people in if you refused to tell them anything about yourself.

And I wanted to be close — really close — to Maeve.

“Our parents died in a car accident when I was nineteen.”

She looked shocked. “I’m… I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”

“How could you?”

She shook her head and looked at her lap. “I should have asked.”

“I wouldn’t have answered,” I said. “Not before now.”

She looked up and met my gaze and I almost fell into her eyes. I’d never been to Alaska, but I’d seen the color of the sea — icy blue — in pictures. That was what Maeve’s eyes looked like and I was more than okay with falling through the ice and drowning in them.

“Why?”

I knew she wasn’t just asking why I wouldn’t have answered her questions. She was asking why I’d ignored her. Why I’d been such a dick.

Why I wouldn’t kiss her that time in the kitchen.

“I taught myself not to want things.”

She bit her lip and nodded like it made sense even though I was pretty sure no one else in the world would find an ounce of sense in it.

But that was the thing about Maeve: shesawme. I’d never minded that other people looked right through me. It had made me feel powerful, even invincible, until Maeve had stared into my soul.

She didn’t look away. She fuckingsawme, and fuck me if I didn’t want to be seen by her.

Now I wanted to lean across the table and kiss her, take her full lower lip between my own teeth and tug as I slipped my tongue inside the wet heat of her mouth.

“What about now?” she asked. “Are you still trying not to want things?”

“No.” I held her gaze. “Now I can’t deny that I want something. And I’m ready to learn how to deal with that.”

39

MAEVE

The conversation got lighterafter we talked about Bram’s parents. I was glad because I was still reeling from the revelations about his sister and parents, and I remembered what Poe had said about people looking away from things that scared them.

I’d wondered what had happened to Bram, and now I felt a new sense of connection to him, the silvery thread of loss that bound us both. It didn’t excuse the way he’d treated me in the past, but I could at least make sense of it.

I taught myself not to want things…

We talked about the Butchers’ business and I finally understood what they did, which was essentially taking a cut of all the illegal trade that was done in Blackwell Falls in exchange for preventing things from getting out of hand. He glossed over that part, but I gathered that it sometimes got violent keeping everyone in line, and that when the situation called for violence the Butchers stepped in to send a message.