Embraced (The Eternal Balance #2)(29)

“Nothing.” The word was sharper than I wanted, but that was fine. If she was pissed then maybe she’d stop asking questions. Questions I couldn’t—and didn’t want to—answer.

She sighed. “When exactly did you start lying to me?”

I ground my teeth together, clenching my jaw hard. No answer was better than biting her head off.

“Seriously, Jax. I might not be able to see your emotions, but I know how you’re feeling.”

“One stupid link and you think you know everything that’s going on inside my head?” I yelled.

Red filled the car. “Screw the link,” Sam shouted. “This is about us. The us that existed long before that damn thing came into play. I’ve known what was going on inside your thick skull since we were kids.”

I pushed harder on the gas, bringing our speed to almost eighty. “What is it you want me to say? That this sucks? That it’s unfair? It is. Deal with it.”

“That’s what I’m trying to do,” she fired back. “Deal with it. In order to deal with something, though, you have to acknowledge that there’s a problem in the first place.”

Sam Merrick. My reason for breathing, but also the source of every migraine I’d ever had. “Fine,” I fired back, fingers digging into the wheel. “There is a f*cking problem. I’m having a hard time controlling things.”

“Things…?”

“Myself,” I said with barely contained loathing.

Deep breaths. Needed to calm down. Azi was growing antsy, nipping at the tendrils of anger I put out. If I kept this up, soon it would be rabid and desperate to feed. When that happened, I would have zero control over any of my impulses. Or the demon’s.

“Myself with you,” I amended, keeping my eyes on the road. “Since we… Things have been harder.”

“Harder, how?”

I didn’t answer. What was I supposed to say? That every time I was close to her, Azi goaded me to rip her clothes off? That I didn’t need the encouragement because I wanted to do that anyway? ’Cause that wouldn’t make me sound like a dick? Add all that to the demon cuff, heightening and siphoning the emotions she was feeling through our link, and you had a recipe for disaster.

“I think it was easier when it was just a fantasy,” Sam said quietly. “Thinking about being with you, of having you back in my life—that unattainable dream that you’d come home one day and everything would just go back to the way it was—was something that made it easier to deal with things.”

“How was that easier?”

“It was easier because it was safe.” She shifted in her seat so she was facing me. I didn’t look at her. “At the risk of sounding corny, love is taking chances, Jax. It’s misery and pain and disappointment right along with all the great stuff. You think this is easy for me? You let me down once already. You promised you’d always be there, and even though I understand why you weren’t, it still stings. I think in the back of my mind, I’m waiting for you to disappear again.”

I wouldn’t tell her that I’d thought about it a thousand times since agreeing to Heckle’s deal. The idea of walking away from her gutted me, but at the same time it felt selfish to stay. It wasn’t a secret, though. She knew how I felt. Knew how, regardless of anything she said, I would always loathe myself and the things I was forced to do. Things I would always be forced to do. This was a permanent situation for me. The demon would always be riding shotgun. It would always be hungry. My life was going to be harsh and savage until the day I took my last breath. The closer I was to her, the bigger the chance of her getting caught in the crossfire when I eventually went down.

“I won’t leave,” I said, switching lanes. Traffic was slowing down. Roadwork, or possibly an accident, was bringing all three lanes to a standstill.

“I know,” she said. “But the fear is there. It’ll always be there, and that’s what I mean. That’s the risk.”

I should have let the conversation die there, but I couldn’t. “It’s hard not to act on what I want when Azi wants the same thing. It…” The words caught in my throat.

“It, what?”

I made the mistake of glancing across the car. She watched me, eyes wide and lips parted slightly. “I want to touch you right now,” I said, taking my right hand from the wheel and reaching for her leg. “Azi needs me to.” I slipped my hand between her thighs, extending my thumb to stroke her through the denim.

“This is about the sex,” she said, understanding. I couldn’t read her expression, and that bothered me. Her colors were still so muddled, too many swirling together to make out any specific emotion.

“I don’t know how to answer that, Sammy. Obviously, yeah, the sex is great.” I chuckled. “Better than great. But for Azi it’s about more than that. It’s about possession. Control. It’s raw and harsh and borders on uncontrollable, and what scares me is sometimes I don’t care.”

She snickered and placed her hand over mine, moving it to her knee. “Sounds like passion to me.”

“There’s something else,” I admitted before I could stop myself. I took my hand back and palmed the steering wheel.

“Okay,” she said carefully.

“Someone else…”