Page 20 of Oath

“Not according to the chaos pixie who keeps turning everything upside down in my life, no.”

Oh. I sniffled, trying to reconcile which of the guys he was talking about. But no, he wouldn’t call them that. Even as I triedto sort it out, the awful hiccups kept jerking little pops of sound out of me.

“Do you have a girlfriend?” I knuckled away some of the tears as I leaned back to look at him.

That earned me a bland look as I blinked trying to focus my sore eyes. For once, I was really glad I’d skipped any kind of makeup today. Because in addition to a shiny, drippy nose, I’d have runny mascara or something to go with it.

“Apparently not,” he said slowly and I frowned.

“Apparently—” Squeezing my eyes shut, I sniffled again but when I opened my eyes he was still there and his bland expression had given way to something more incredulous. “I just—who is the manic pixie?”

“Chaos pixie,” he corrected even as one corner of his mouth kicked up. Then with callused fingers, he gently traced away some of the tears still tracking down my face.

“Right—oh.” Then it hit me. “You think I’m a chaos pixie?”

“Think?” He shook his head. “Iknowyou are.”

I sniffled again. “I really hate crying.”

“It looked like so much fun, too.” The deadpan response had me smiling, a little. “The shiny nose—it’s very attractive.”

Even if the tears were still leaking a little, I stared at him in actual disbelief. “Really?”

“On you?” He nodded. “You’re always attractive. Though, I would prefer you didn’t hurt to do it.”

“I’m not hurting.” No sooner did I say it than he raised his eyebrows. “Fine. I have to be fine. I can’t?—”

One ragged breath.

Two ragged breaths.

Then…

“I did it to survive. If I break up about it now, then I’m admitting I let them hurt me. ThatIhurt me to do it. I—just didit so I could make it out the other side.” I licked my lips, this time just tasting the salt from my tears.

“Doing something to survive doesn’t mean remembering it won’t hurt.” The even tone held not one ounce of judgment. He’d actually moved one of his hands to my lower back and traced light circles with his thumb against my skin.

It grounded me.

“Doesn’t mean you don’t get to hurt over it either.” Another gentle caress of his fingers against my cheek to wipe away more tears. “Hurting tells us we’re alive. Even when we aren’t sure we deserve to be.”

I wanted to protest, but the last sentence stilled the words on my tongue.

“Survival is hard. Surviving is a little easier, but once you’ve survived, you have time to look back. To question. To wonder. To decide what you could have done, should have done maybe, or would have if you had known everything.”

I didn’t think we were talking about me anymore and Ilistened. “Hindsight is twenty-twenty and all that.”

“Yes, it is. Because once you’ve survived, you know what happened. You have all the details, not the suppositions or the maybes or even the possibles, youknow. But you can’t know until it’s over.”

He rubbed his cheek gently against my forehead. The faintest rasp of his stubble seemed inordinately loud, but I held on fast to the prickly feeling of it.

“I didn’t want to die,” I admitted. “When I woke up in that place, I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want them to hurt me like they were hurting those other women.” Each word seemed to break loose from the stone where I’d entombed those memories. “I didn’t want to think about it. Even when I told you guys about it?—”

This wasn’t the first time. I’d danced around it maybe, or rushed past it.

“If you don’t say it out loud, it didn’t happen.” He tilted his head back, watching me from beneath his lashes.

“Maybe,” I said. “I wanted to be tough and strong and just—you know, get through it.”