Page 171 of Savage Hearts

“It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not. Look at me, lass. Please.”

When I don’t turn around, he comes to stand in front of me. He looks at my posture, how I’ve got my arms around my body, and sighs heavily, dragging a hand over his hair.

“Now you’re afraid of me. That’s bloody wonderful.”

“I’m not afraid of you. But I can’t understand why you didn’t listen to me when I begged you, over and over, not to put me on that plane. To take me back to the market. I didn’t exactly mince words.”

He pauses, then says in a gravelly voice, “You know why.” When I don’t reply, he prompts, “Don’t you, lass?”

I hesitate. Chewing my lip, I nod.

My silence makes him bolder. “Why? Say it.”

Burning with mortification, I blurt, “Please don’t make this harder for me than it already is.”

He steps closer. His voice drops. “Say it. Tell me you know what I feel. What I want. Say it, and I’ll give you his number.”

When I remain silent and he takes one more step toward me,his energy borderline threatening, I flatten a hand over his chest. Looking into his eyes, I say, “That’s enough.”

Under my palm, his heart beats like crazy.

Keeping my voice gentle though I’m angry, I say, “You’re my friend, and I care for you. I hate that you’ve put yourself through hell with guilt—”

“You don’t know the half of it.”

“—and I hate that you won’t accept that I don’t blame you for anything. That I know you didn’t mean it. And thank you, honestly, thank you for trying to find me, for spending all that time looking. I’ll never forget you did that.

“But please don’t think you can back me into a corner and make me say something I don’t want to say or do something I don’t want to do, because I’ve spent the last three months growing into a person who knows her own strength. I looked Death in the face and told him to go fuck himself. Nobody can push me around anymore.”

He stands staring at me with his jaw working and his nostrils flared.

“Please, Spider. Please can we just be friends and put this behind us?”

After a long moment, he says flatly, “Sure. We’ll be friends.”

He steps back and heads to the door. I watch him go in dismay.

“I take it this means you won’t give me Mal’s number.”

Over his shoulder he says, “I never fucking had it.”

He walks out, throwing the door open so hard it slams against the wall.

The next week is the longest of my life.

I stay with Declan and Sloane in their new place in Boston, wandering listlessly up and down the hallways, sighing, until Sloane shouts that I’m driving her crazy. I retreat to the bedroom they gave me to brood by myself.

Declan agreed to pass a message to his mysterious friend to try to get to Mal for me, but wouldn’t promise it would make it.

The message was simply,“Mouse deer never give up.”I hear nothing back.

I spend hours at a time on the computer, poring over maps of Russia, plotting routes in every direction that would take me to a small town a two-hour flight plus a one-hour drive away from Moscow.

There are hundreds of them.

Even if I did somehow get to Russia, I could spend years trying to find the little cabin in the woods. The country is huge.