Tragic Bonds (The Bonds That Tie #5)(14)

Tomorrow I’ll be with him again, hold him until he’s reassured that I’m not going anywhere. That, and I’ll have to try to talk Nox into spending the day with him as well, for long enough that he remembers how much his little brother can get on his nerves.

“I don’t, though. He’s never once gotten pissed off at me.”

“Not even when I showed up?” I say with a smile, trying to delicately start the conversation we so desperately need to have, but his face stays solemn.

“Not even then. He just sunk deeper into his loathing for his aunt… my mother.”

Ah.

The woman who has always stood between the two of us, invisible to me but so clear to him. I find that I might join North in that loathing, because that woman deserves to be cursed by every last one of us, every day until the end of time.

“You saw everything.”

Deep breath. There’s no point trying to lie to him. “I did.”

The room is so quiet that I can hear the very slow and controlled way that he’s breathing, the way that he’s forcing himself to stay calm. I already know that if he loses control right now, he’s going to lash out at me, and he’s trying not to. Funny, now that I understand it more than ever, he’s finally trying to break the habit, but that just makes my heart ache even more.

“Why aren’t you looking at me any differently?”

I swallow and shrug slowly, carefully thought-out movements so as to not ruin this moment. “Why would I? You didn’t do anything wrong.”

His head rolls on his shoulders until he’s staring at the ceiling, avoiding my eyes, even though there’s nothing in them for him to be worried about. “The shadows could have killed her. They could’ve killed her years before North came for me. I… never did protect myself like I could’ve.”

I hate that he thinks like that, and I can’t stop my words from coming out soaked in sorrow and sympathy. “You were a child.”

His words are like ice. “So were you.”

The air gets knocked out of my lungs. Knocked out in that permanent, I’ll-never-breathe-again sort of way where I think that I’m actually dying.

I could’ve handled just about any answer, except that one.

My vision blacks out a little as I attempt and fail to get oxygen into my body, until I feel hands on my cheeks, long fingers framing my face as a low voice speaks to me softly. The bed moves next to me as a large body lies down beside me, but even with my eyes open, I can’t see who’s attempting to soothe me.

I assume that it’s North, finally here to rescue me, that finally Nox’s brother, the man who knows almost all of his secrets, has decided to put an end to this, and he’s taken down the door to get to me because my panic has broken down his restraint.

Except it’s not North.

Nox murmurs quietly, nonsense things that don’t really string together to form proper sentences but slowly, painfully, begin to calm me down anyway.

A shuddering breath ekes out of me, and he presses in closer, still not quite touching me other than the hands framing my face. It all feels deeply intimate though, the way that we’re sharing our breaths and staring into each other’s eyes so openly. There’s nothing hidden between us, our souls have been stripped bare to each other, and I have no questions left about this man.

Every broken and scarred inch of him is known to me.

And I love it all.

Even when he tries so hard to break me open just to soothe the demons in his head and the parts of him that could never trust a Bonded, not ever.

His eyes drop down to the tears still streaming down my cheeks unchecked, but he doesn’t move to wipe them away. He’s not afraid of seeing the raw emotions. If anything, it’s comforting to him to see the way he’s unintentionally hurt me.

To know that I have the capacity for remorse and guilt is comforting.

He’s arguably more messed up than I am… or maybe not, because knowing this about him isn’t a red flag at all. It’s a sign that he’s just as jaded as I am. There’s no rose-colored glasses skewing his view of things, and he would never let someone take advantage of him again.

I’ve already forgiven him, even as my chest aches so badly that every breath burns as though my lungs are on fire. It takes me a minute to get myself under control, but Nox’s fingers don’t stop stroking my face, his lips still move with the low, comforting murmurs. He stays with me until I can breathe again.

When he does finally explain himself, it’s in fractured pieces that are strung together haphazardly. “I didn’t… mean it like that. I meant that you protected yourself. You were young, but you did it. I… didn’t.”

Tears spring into my eyes, the trauma of what he went through still so fresh in my mind, and I’m careful about moving slowly as I cover his hands with my own. “She was all you knew. You had no one else, not that you knew of, and you would have died in that house without her. I murdered my parents. It doesn’t matter that I didn’t mean to… that’s exactly what I did.”

I stop talking because every word feels as though it’s a razor blade, slicing me up and bleeding me out as they tumble out of my mouth. Nox doesn’t push for more, he just stares at me for a second longer, then slides his hands away from my face, breaking that small connection between us as he rolls onto his back beside me. “I’ll take it to my grave, Oleander.”