The Shadows (Black Dagger Brotherhood, #13)(122)

He sat down next to her. “Lot of shit going on the last few days—”

Before she knew it, she burst into tears and leaned into his big chest.

Circling her with his heavy arms, he held her gently and let her cry it all out—and the fact that he mistakenly assumed the tears were only because she was pregnant and having twins and overly hormonal made her cry even harder.

She cried for the months and months of lying and deception; she cried for all the trips to that meadow; for her sneaking in and out of the house; for using the car Qhuinn had bought her to do it.

And most of all, worst of all, she cried for a sense of loss so powerful it was as if someone had died before her and there had been naught she could do to save them.

Images of Xcor bombarded her, from his attempts to make himself comely and see to it that he had been always clean even fresh from fighting … to the way he looked in that shower, silhouetted as his body climaxed behind the curtain … to the defeat that had hung his head as he had stared into the fire like some vital part of him had been exposed and was bleeding him, weakening him, changing him.

She tried to tell herself it was for the best. No more double life. No more falsity. No more hiding her phone or worrying about whether her whereabouts were discovered.

No more Xcor—

“I’ll call Doc Jane,” Qhuinn said urgently as he went for the house phone.

“What? No, I’m—”

“How bad are your chest pains?”

“What?” she said through the sniffles. “What are you—”

He pointed to her sternum. Looking down, she found that she had grabbed onto the front of her flannel nightgown, the soft fabric bunching up under her tight fist.

It was the origin of the tears, she thought.

They were coming from her heart.

“Honestly,” she whispered. “I’m all right. I just had to get it out—I’m so sorry.”

Qhuinn’s hand hovered over the receiver. And even when he finally retracted his arm, she was very clear that he was not convinced.

“I think I need to eat something,” she said.

It was the farthest thing from the truth, but he immediately went into order mode, calling Fritz instead of the medical types, asking for all kinds of food.

His worry about her well-being and his attentiveness only made her cry all over again.

Dearest Virgin Scribe … she was in mourning, wasn’t she.





FORTY-SIX


“Okay, so we get in this.”

Selena grabbed onto the hand that Trez offered her and stepped over the lip of the first capsule in a lineup of six. The little pod-like constructions were set upon a pair of tracks, and had two seats side by side with a bar that was raised over the shallow hood. After Trez joined her, a uniformed operator gave them a nod from a control panel at the far end of the platform.

“It goes that way?” she asked, pointing ahead to a mountain rise. “We go up that?”

Trez had to clear his throat. Twice. “Ah, yeah. We do.”

“Oh, my God, that’s so high!”

“I, ah, yeah. It is.”

She turned to him as the bar came down over the top of their legs. “Trez, seriously, you’re going to hate this—”

There was a jerk and then they were moving forward on the track, a little chk-chk-chk created as the wheels began to turn with increasing speed.

“You, however, are going to love it,” he said, kissing her. “You may want to hold on.”

As they began an ascent that was nearly vertical, her back pressed into the padded seat and her hands gripped the cold metal bar. For a moment, she wished she’d taken the gloves that had been offered back at the house, but then she forgot all about the discomfort.

Higher, higher, higher … impossibly high.

Craning over the side, she grinned. “Oh, my God, we’re so high up!”

And they were only halfway to the top.

The chk-chk-chk became very loud, and the jerking got stronger, until she felt as if someone were pushing at her shoulders. The breeze grew cooler and more brisk, too, her hair whipping off to the side, her parka challenged to keep the warmth of her torso intact.

“The view is incredible,” she breathed.

It wasn’t as high as they’d been the night before, but with no buffer between her and the expanse below, no panes of glass to insulate her from the drop, nothing but the track ahead and the ever-increasing distance to the ground, she felt as if she were soaring.

And the park’s lights were magnificent. Multi-colored and flashing, they were everywhere she looked down below, marking the contours of the various rides, reflecting off the mirrors and the red and yellow and blue tops of the concession stands.

“It’s as if the sky has been inverted and the stars are down here!”

“Yeah. Oh, uh-huh … yeah. I guess we’re at the top … oh, yeah, wow. Uh-huh.”

Abruptly, they leveled off and everything got quiet except for the wind that muffled in her ears, the ride becoming smooth and gentle as they rounded an easy corner.

A quick glance at her male, and she saw that, despite his dark skin, he was pale as a ghost.

She let go with one of her hands and covered his. “Trez, how about we stay on the ground after this, okay?”

“Oh, no, it’s fine—I’m tight, I’m good.”