Page 13 of Sidhe (The Incubus Saga #3)

“I don’t expect you to!” Sasha countered, standing defensibly before Nathan, who was still on the bed.

Then Sasha paused as it registered that Nathan had admitted it had been a year for him.

“I just want to help you get back what you can so we can have something . Do you hate me that much for what I did to bring you back? Because I couldn’t save you sooner?

Is what Malak made of me enough that you really don’t want this anymore…

?” His eyes shimmered back to blue, filling with sudden dampness.

“Are you even listening to me? I don’t feel anything ,” Nathan shot back. “I thought I did, thought I could again, but I shut down a long time ago and every day I’m reminded a little more that there is nothing left. I don’t even know…if I love you anymore.”

Those words might as well have been a knife to Sasha’s gut for all the devastation they left in their wake. The tears dried in Sasha’s eyes, too overwhelmed to fall as he stumbled back. “You don’t mean that.”

Standing slowly from the bed, Nathan kept his expression like stone. “You so sure?”

“I know you, Nathan. I know what you’re doing. You can’t deal with this so you figure better to suffer alone. But you can’t push me away. I’m not going anywhere.”

Christ , how that stubbornness riled Nathan even more.

“I. Don’t. Love. You,” he said deliberately as he stepped into Sasha’s space.

“Nathan’s not home right now. Nathan’s an empty meat sack.

Nathan’s still in Hell!” Only this was worse.

This was worse because it should be right, it should be okay, but it wasn’t.

“Thanks so much for your help getting me out,” he finished bitterly.

Sasha stumbled in place like he no longer had the strength to stand.

His mouth quivered, his hands shook, but still he wouldn’t give up.

“You’re wrong. You’re wrong, Nathan. I know you’re still in there.

And I know it’s hard, I know I can’t ever understand what it was like, what you’re going through, but we can find our way back to the way things were, we can.

You want that as much as I do, I know you do, or you wouldn’t have tried so hard to be with me tonight. ”

The cruelty building so sharply within Nathan almost had him laughing. “I thought you could show me, remind me of what I should feel. You out of everyone should be able to do that, I thought. Then you know what I thought? I thought who the hell cares, I just wanna fuck and forget for a while.

“There is nothing to stir up and dig out of me. This isn’t something you can magically fix with a little time and TLC. The harder you try, the harder I try to fake this into working, the more I want nothing to do with you.”

And it was true. It filled Nathan with despair he wouldn’t let Sasha see, but it was true.

He turned away.

“Nathan.”

“Shut up.”

“ Nathan ,” Sasha said more insistently.

“Just leave me the fuck alone.”

“Damn it, Nathan!” Sasha grabbed Nathan’s wrist.

Nathan whirled on him, wrenching his arm back. “I said leave me alone!”

Startled, Sasha instantly backed off. Nathan knew why too, as the lights in the bedroom flickered. His eyes were black again and Sasha looked downright terrified.

“Are you afraid of me?” Nathan asked mockingly, lessening the gap between them again with a few quick strides. “I don’t even have any powers like Jim. You could tear me apart. And you’re afraid of me .”

Sasha sighed, simpering and sad again. “I couldn’t tear you apart, Nathan.”

“Right,” Nathan scoffed. That was Sasha’s problem, the reason he had given into Jim so easily in the Veil.

The damn bleeding heart couldn’t accept that sometimes other people needed to hurt.

Nathan needed to hurt. “Yeah, ‘course you wouldn’t. You’d just lie there and take it, wouldn’t you? And why not? It’s in your blood.”

Sasha flinched and his expression hardened.

“I know you love me, Nathan,” he said. And then he finally gave Nathan what he wanted.

He punched him so fast and so hard, Nathan’s head cracked to the side and the room spun around him.

“That’s why you deserve that.” Sasha turned and began scrounging for his clothes.

He put them on without saying another word.

It took Nathan a moment to realize that the room’s spinning had ended with him half-sprawled on the bed, his jaw aching painfully. It felt good. It felt real. Apparently the Gatehouse wards wouldn’t protect him from violence anymore either.

“You can’t get rid of me, Nathan,” Sasha said when he was dressed and a little less flush from anger and dwindling arousal. “I’m sleeping somewhere else tonight, but I’m still going to be here in the morning.”

For a while after Sasha left, Nathan just stayed there on the bed, lying back on it with his jaw pulsing.

He didn’t really feel any physically different than he had before the Veil.

He could feel when his eyes were black if he really thought about it.

But that was it. Whatever had changed in him went deeper than his body.

Eventually, he got up, found his own clothes, dressed. All of his things were in the room. Nathan still had car keys in his jeans pocket. It was easy to pack up what he would need.

“You’ll still be here in the morning…” he mumbled to no one. “Then I won’t be.”

It had been almost two days since they tried his cell.

Nathan kept it on silent, let it buzz on the seat beside him that once upon a time would have sat a Jim or an incubus.

He would glance at it from time to time, the screen displaying that he had “3 missed calls” then “11 missed calls” then “27.” He thought they would never stop: Jim, Iain, Alex, even Shiarra eventually, though she had already left.

Not Sasha though. The calls never came from Sasha. Of course they didn’t. Nathan had pushed, and Sasha had railed back against him, but Nathan had won in the end. Nothing beat walking away. It was the one thing Nathan knew Sasha would never forgive him for.

A week had gone by, almost two now. They had called so consistently in the beginning.

Nathan half expected when he first took off that Sasha would come flying after him, wings spread on the wind in pained desperation.

But Sasha hadn’t. Doing that wouldn’t have stopped Nathan anyway, it wouldn’t have changed anything.

He just couldn’t do it. He couldn’t fake himself into living a life he barely remembered. He wasn’t that strong.

There was never a real destination in mind.

He just drove. He hadn’t gotten all that far from Missouri really, having just passed some dinky town called Widener, Arkansas as he headed in the direction of Memphis.

Half his time was spent in whatever motel seemed most out of the way, the other half in the car.

He only thought to eat when he was halfway to passing out.

Most of the time he didn’t even turn on the radio.

So it was deep into the twilight hour, three AM maybe, only local roads and no other cars in sight.

Nathan had thought about turning around so many times, about picking up that phone whenever it buzzed.

But he couldn’t. He didn’t belong with them anymore.

He’d just ruin everything little by little until they hated him for it, until Sasha left because he didn’t remember how to love either, and Jim just gave up.

If it wasn’t that then Nathan knew he would somehow be the reason Jim finally lost his way, embracing some darker part of him that Nathan had seen come to life in the Veil.

If Nathan wasn’t there then he couldn’t be to blame.

If he wasn’t there then he would never have to see his world crumble. Again.

Two days without a call. Had they given up? Were they finally going to let him go?

Nathan squeezed the steering wheel too tightly in his hands and glanced up at the rearview mirror.

His eyes were green. Green. And he’d keep them that way until his body gave out on him.

Already, his tired and drawn face resembled more the image Nathan remembered from the Veil, gazing emptily back at him.

His necklace, with his father’s wedding ring like a beacon of everything he had been meant to protect, hung prominent against his chest, glittering back at him from his reflection.

Grabbing it suddenly with a tight fist, Nathan yanked hard enough to break the chain.

He tossed the necklace onto the passenger seat next to his cell phone.

He couldn’t go back. They didn’t want him back, they’d see that soon.

Their stopped calls already meant they wouldn’t search forever.

He didn’t even feel regret anymore; it was easy not to feel anything.

Finally, two weeks gone, he was certain he had made the right choice.

“I’m so happy to hear that, Nathan.”