The hero’s story kept going after that book was over.
She had a hunch Mac, on the other hand, had always really, fully seen her. Maybe better than anyone else had back then. She knew it based on how she felt with him: as though the entire world was dialed cleanly into focus.
She’d thought of herself as enmeshed with Corbin, but it wasn’t entirely true. The details of their lives were. But it ought to have hurt more to pull free of him. Really hurt, clean to the bone. And here she was, kissing another guy, as if this was where she actually belonged.
She could only imagine the kind of pain that would lead Mac to just sever ties with his whole family. If something was killing you with pain, wouldn’t you want it gone? But cutting off a member of her family seemed to her like hacking off a limb because she’d sprained it.
Whether Mac realized it or not, he had his dad’s ruthlessness, too. He saw things in black-and-white.
Avalon had a hunch that inherent in that ruthlessness was fear.
So while Mac kissed like an angel, it wouldn’t pay to forget that he was just as hard as he was gentle. Being seduced by one could mean being destroyed by the other. He was not a guy who did things by halves.
She sighed.
When she’d laid her hand against his chest to end that kiss... she’d felt his heart thudding against her palm. Racing exactly as it had the very first time he kissed her on the path between wild blackberries.
She turned her palm upright and rested it on her lap like something she’d rescued.
She closed her eyes. Suddenly unutterably weary.
Her bed wanted to suck her in the way the hot springs had.
And in one of those romantic gestures that likely would have made Mac scoff, she raised her palm and pressed her lips gently to it. As if she could comfort him that way.
As if she could comfort herself that way.
She certainly wasn’t going to come up with any solutions tonight. All she would do was create more existential shreds. Kind of like she’d done to the wallpaper in the master bedroom.
She gave a start when her phone buzzed in a message.
She looked down at it.Her heart gave a sickening, reflexive lurch.
It was Corbin.
Avalon, I don’t blame you for not wanting to talk to me. But I wish you’d let me know where we stand.
Aw. Corbin didn’t “blame” her. Wasn’t that magnanimous of him.
Still, she could almost hear the misery in his voice. Her throat knotted.
She never could bear his misery, either. Mostly because that’s what she did: she wanted to comfort and she wanted to save.
She needed to comfort and saveherself.
She did have an answer to one of his questions. She didn’t know if he’d find it a relief or not.
There IS no “we” anymore.
She sent it, and then shut the phone off.
She wasn’t going to be able to avoid an actual conversation with him, or her life in San Francisco, forever. But unlike Corbin, she didn’t just foist the difficult things, the things that hurt, the things she didn’t want to do, off onto someone else. She would talk to him. And she would take it like a big girl.
She patted the bed next to her and Chick Pea settled into a circle in the crook of her arm.
She closed her eyes and breathed in and breathed out.
And before sleep took her under, she tucked her palm against her cheek.
And she imagined Mac’s heart beating against it.