Matt’s lips quirked at the corner. For a few years, while they hunted the Dark One, that was the only smile he had ever worn. But after the Dark One fell, she had seen it less and less often as he softened and relaxed, no longer responsible for any life but his own.
The return of that smile meant he working Aelia, and Sloane was getting in the way.
Six drops the phone and covers her mouth and I’ve never seen eyes fill with tears as fast as hers just did. “Daniel?” she whispers. Her voice is cautious. She’s scared to believe this.
“He wanted to care, he wanted to care so badly, but there was this gap between what he felt and what he wanted to feel, a space where something important had been carved out.”
A babysitter, a house far away from everything, forest everywhere, and a kid that says some weird things. Oh yes!
“I was not a pet, not a doll, not an animal.
I was a survivor, and I was strong.
I would not be weak, or helpless again
I would not, could not be broken. Tamed.”
Lowering my chin so that it dipped under the hem of my sweater, I closed my eyes. The moment I did so, I regretted it, because in that room, with nothing but the wind and nothing to focus on, I thought about what had happened between Kyler and me last night. How was I ever going to forget that?
