Enflame (Insight #6)(44)
“I was hoping I was wrong about that emotion,” he said gently.
“Why are you questioning your insight of emotion? What did they do to you?” I asked, daring to meet his sultry gaze.
His tantalizing eyes were drinking every part of me in. “Everything is intensified, including my own emotions. I just have to make sure that what I feel is really not just me.”
“Why would my numbness scare you?”
A weak smile dared to met the corners of his lips. “When I would hear my parents fight when I was younger, August would tell me not to worry when they fought, but worry when they stopped because that meant they didn’t care anymore. He said that my fears were foolish because all soul-mates cared...you’re not fighting with me.”
“Why do you want me to?” I asked with a hint of a tremble in my voice.
“You have every right to. You followed me here. We left every single person we care about behind. My past has been thrown into your face. I refuse to go home. I refuse to ask for help or help others unless I know I have to. You should have ripped me to shreds by now, but you haven’t.”
I reached for his waist, pulling him closer. He leaned his forehead against mine, bringing his fingertips to trace my bottom lip as if I were a forbidden fruit he could not touch.
“I’m trying to let you work through this.”
Both his hands raised to either side of my face, cradling me gently as his eyes painfully rained over my face.
“You always told me that you would not have the control if or when we found someone from my past—you basically promised me that you would be deadly. But, you’re not. You stood there last night, not one emotion.”
“Your insights are jacked up. It took everything I had to stand next to the two of you. I have no choice but to have control. I have to keep my emotions at bay. When you step away from this, you will see how this doesn’t matter right now. She doesn’t matter.”
His hands fell from me as he turned. “It does matter.” He glanced over his shoulder at me. “Last night, I watched you die over and over again in Drake’s arms as I stood next to her, as I was fooled by an image of you. I was a fool then, and right now you should be telling me that. I should be begging you to forgive me.”
I stepped forward and wrapped my arms around his waist. “I feel you inside me. I know how hard you are being on yourself. I love you...unconditionally.”
His hands squeezed my arms. “I don’t deserve you.”
“I don’t deserve you, so now we’re even.”
I let my arms fall and walked around him, setting the bags on the floor beside the bed before I pushed my shoes off and climbed into the bed.
“I have a million questions, and we both need sleep, so can we please go to our place?” I said as I lay down and caught his alluring stare, feeling the passion ignite within him.
He slowly climbed on the bed, hovering over my body, allowing me to feel the heat of his presence. His lips found mine and gently kissed them. The hum of his touch sent warm chills across my skin. I opened my eyes in protest when he stopped his kiss. His fingertips gently reached for my eyes, shutting them, then he lay next to me and let his humming hands caress me to sleep.
I was exhausted, but my mind was racing in every direction. It took a while for me to fall asleep, and it seemed like even longer before I found myself in our place, sitting on the bank of a gentle river on a sunny hillside.
Quietly staring into nothing, I waited on him. When the day turned to night, instantly I glanced to my side to find him there.
“I wonder if I could heal your eyes with my energy.”
It was so odd to see him in constant darkness. He’d always been my sun.
“If we only join our energy to heal each other or make each other stronger, then it becomes a chore...that is not its purpose.”
“You can call it a chore. I’ll call it an excuse.”
That made him grin, but I was already crawling closer to him, reaching my soul for his. He stopped me, holding my gaze.
“I’m not going to ignore this. It will only make it worse. We are resting now, in our place. Talk to me,” he pleaded.
“I don’t know where to start. I told you I’m fine.”
“And you told me you hated that word. Ask me anything. Let’s get it all out. I can’t handle this wall I feel between us.”
“You feel a wall?”
“I feel you holding back.”
“Because I have to, you know that.”
He tilted his head and offered a tender gaze. “No, Willow, you can’t hold it in either. You have to learn to balance it. Control is not enough. Your emotions are a power—like a hand,” he thought, lacing his fingertips through mine. “You can caress, console, love, pull something closer, push it way, or shape it into a powerful punch...pushing that down will put us right back where we were before Mars.”
My hungry gaze took in his essence, everything about him; his eyes, which could be compassionate one minute, usually when looking at me, and fierce the next, usually when speaking to anyone else. His strong profile that seemed to clench when his anger surfaced. The mark of his dimples that beamed when he when he was happy. Everything about him was the same, yet different.
My mother had told me once that soul mates fall in love with the same person a thousand times. I think for the first time that random rambling made sense to me. I smiled shyly, knowing that advice came when I was no more than ten, on a night I was watching her get ready for an anniversary date with my dad. I couldn’t figure out why she was so nervous, so I questioned that emotion.