A Warm Heart in Winter(44)

No, even worse, he’d told Bella to leave.

And yet even after she was gone, he’d decided to try to better himself. To learn how to read and write. To stop being so brutally angry.

Destroying his mistress’s skull, which he had slept beside since he had killed her, had been part of it. So, too, had been starting to sleep in a bed.

Little had he known that he had been preparing for Bella’s return. And it was only after she had returned and, by some miracle, taken him back, that he’d realized what he’d been doing. He’d been afraid he’d fail, however, and that was why he’d had to set her free. After a century of hating himself, he’d had no reason to believe he’d be close to worthy—

Z twisted around with a jerk. “Hello?”

There were a couple of footsteps, and then Mary, Rhage’s shellan, stepped in between the open jambs of the storage unit. The female was not vampire, but neither was she human anymore, really. The Scribe Virgin had taken her out of the continuum of time, the result of a bargain Rhage had struck to save Mary’s life from her terminal cancer. In return, the brother had to live with his beast for the rest of his nights, and you know what? He seemed very satisfied with his choices—and Z could totally get it. Mary was a bastion of calm and reasonable, the perfect foil to Rhage’s out-there.

“Hi.” She smiled as she ran a hand through her short brown hair. “I hope you don’t mind that I followed you.”

Z looked down at what he was holding. “I used to sleep on this.”

There was no need to fill her in on anything or provide any context. The two of them had spent hours together, sorting through his past, talking things over, reframing when and where they could. Mary was not just a stellar social worker; she was also very wise and very caring. She had helped him so much.

“You slept on it for a long time,” she said as she leaned against the jamb. As usual, she was wearing well-washed jeans and a cozy sweater, the enormous gold Rolex on her wrist not fitting her no-makeup, unfussy-brunette-bob vibe. But she always had Rhage’s watch on.

“Any particular reason you decided to revisit that blanket tonight?” she asked.

“I don’t know.” For a moment, he hoped she would fill in the answer—because dollars to donuts, she was well aware of why he was here. But he should have known better. He had to do the work. “Maybe it’s because of what happened to Balthazar.”

“Seeing someone you live with that close to death is really upsetting.”

“It’s also what he said when he came around.” Z filled her in on the demon comment. “He was looking right at me when he spoke.”

“Did you feel as though it was a message specifically for you?”

“I did.”

When he didn’t go any further, she prompted, “And do you think that your mistress has returned from the dead to haunt you?”

Z thought that over for a moment. Logically . . . ? “Well, no. But that’s exactly where my mind went when I heard the word ‘demon.’”

“Makes sense to me.”

He looked back down at the folds of the pallet. “But you know . . . it’s not just that.” He thought about Nalla running toward him in the bedroom. “It isn’t all gone. What I think about myself, my insides.”

“Can you be more specific?”

“The . . . filthy part.” He glanced over at her. “What the voice tells me, you know, about what I really am, what my family fails to see.”

“What do they fail to see about you?”

“How dirty I am.” His voice became small. “How . . . filthy I am.” Before Mary could say anything, he cleared his throat. “But I mean, we’ve been through all that already. We’ve spent how much time talking about what was done to me by that female?”

Only silence came back at him. Which was frustrating as fuck.

“Why isn’t it gone?” he demanded. “My life is good. I’m in love, I have a daughter. Everything is good.”

“Yes, it is.”

“So what the fuck?” He frowned. “And I’m sorry, I don’t mean to get all pissy with you.”

“It’s totally understandable. I’ve been a resource for you, and I’ve done what I can to help. If you want to direct that animus to me, I can take it.”

“But you can’t make it go away.” He motioned next to his head. “This fucking shit is always going to be with me, huh. No matter how much better I get.”

Mary came across to him, kneeling down and meeting his stare levelly. “When was the last time you felt the need to come down here?”

“It’s been . . . well, not since I put this box away.”

“And when was the last time that voice in your head kept you up during the day?”

“I dunno. Guess a month, maybe longer.”

“And your last nightmare?”

“October.”

When she just stared at him patiently, he rubbed his face. “Okay, fine, it’s getting better. Compared to the every-waking-minute it used to be. But goddamn . . . I just get exhausted retreading the same territory. The same pain. The same weakness.”

Mary nodded. And then said, “You know, I have a theory about injury and healing. It’s just anecdotal, from my own personal experience with trauma—which, granted, is nothing measured against your own.” She shifted around to sit cross-legged, like she was prepared to stay for however long he needed her to. “In my opinion, souls are no different than limbs. If you break a leg or an arm, it’s going to hurt when it happens, sharply and unbearably. Therapy is like what you do to set the bone properly in a cast and monitor its mending. It’s the physical rehab, the stretching, the follow-up X-rays. But the limb is never the same. On rainy days, the joint aches. If you run a marathon on it, it will be sore. Maybe the healed part isn’t quite right. Souls are the same. There are different marathons we run, whether it’s the day-to-day interactions with our spouses or the people we work with. Maybe it’s an event like Balthazar getting hurt. Perhaps it’s an anniversary of a bad night—or even a good one, like a holiday or a birthday. These are the marathons our souls run, and sometimes, where we have healed aches. Or worse. And that is a nonnegotiable part of being a survivor.”