The Worst Way Forward

  The tears won’t stop. It takes everything I have to keep the crushing pain in my chest silent, but I manage. My teeth clench so hard pain lances up my jaw, and both hands have a white-knuckled grip on my pillow, but not even a shuddered hiccup gives me away.

  Steady breathing at my back tells me Kaith is still asleep. I take comfort in it, that he won’t wake yet again to find me falling apart. That I won’t need his rescue. At this point, it’s the only thing we’re good at—I shatter, and he picks up the pieces.

  Except this time, it feels different. I’m no stranger to nightmares, my mind determined to throw every scarred piece of me back in my face. I’m used to waking in the night with a sour taste in my mouth and my heart beating too fast.

  But in the two years since I fell apart, I haven’t seen her.

  “Vitani?” The familiar voice is husky with sleep.

  I freeze.

  “Vitani, are you all right?”

  A hand settles on my shoulder. The touch should be comforting, but Kath’s fingers send spiders crawling beneath my skin. I scramble, hands flailing, to put space between him and I. He lets me go, releasing my arm so fast I fall from the mattress. Cold ground meets my hand and thigh, and something crunches in my hip.

  I cry out. Images careen around my head, remnants of the dream I don’t want: a face full of so many freckles they look like stars in the night sky; eyes the color of lupine blossoms; a smile split in two by the thin white line of a scar.

  “Vitani?” Concern floods the sound of my name.

  I force a breath through my nose and let my eyes flick open. The bedroom wall takes up all of my vision, cold radiating from the wood. Pine slats, the same ones I’ve looked at since deciding to give moving on my best gods-forsaken effort four months ago.

  How well that’s going.

  I push myself to sit. “I’m alright.”

  The move must read as some sort of invitation, because Kaith crouches near the foot of the bed, his eyes moving over me, from purple head to pointed tail tip. “I’ve seen you get nightmares, but I’ve never seen…that.”

  I nod slowly. In the dark, the sight of him isn’t as comforting as it should be. He’s the same man I’ve known since last spring, when a patrol found him lying in the dirt with more blood than skin. I learned of it when my moms practically kicked down our front door, carrying a makeshift stretcher and demanding to know if I could save him. It was there, staring at him shivering on our dining room table, that I felt something like myself for the first time in more than a year.

  Kaith takes a steadying breath, and I wonder if he thinks I’ll tell him what I saw. If he thinks I’ll say her name out loud. I hope not, otherwise he’s in for a world of disappointment.

  Not that I’ve been much of anything else since he offered to be more than just a kind face, and pulled me from the worst parts of myself in the process.

  “Tell me what you need,” he says when I don’t speak. “I can start a fire for tea, or there’s still duck leftover from dinner. Or, if you’re up to it, we can try to go back to sleep.”

  I can hear the waver in his voice, worry so thick it’s practically a physical thing. It’s not the first time I’ve woken us in the night, plagued by night terrors since a letter shattered my world and everything in it.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, mostly to break the awful silence that keeps landing in the wake of Kaith’s kindness. “I don’t know where that came from.”

  His face softens. He twists to lower himself to the floor beside me and stretches out his hand in offering. I take it, letting him pull me into a warm, broad chest. He settles me against him, my head finding his good shoulder, the one that doesn’t still ache on cold nights just like this.

  His stubbled cheek rests against my temple. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “No.” The word is biting, and I wince at the sound of it. I force myself to take a deep breath and try again. “No, thank you. It’s better if I don’t.”

  He nods slowly. One hand slides up and down the sleeve of my sleep shirt, the motion gentle. Meant to be comforting.

  It makes my stomach heave.

  I push myself up, steadying myself on the bedpost. “You should get some sleep. You have an early morning, and you’re no good to the hunting party dead on your feet.”

  He watches me go, his eyes dark in the low light. “I’ll manage. Worst case, they find someone else. A band of goblins isn’t that difficult to track.”

  “A ranger goes a long way in making sure no one gets hurt. I know I’d feel better if my moms had you to stop them from running headlong into whatever they find.”

  Silence answers me. I try not to turn into it, knowing if I see the expression on Kaith’s face, the gnawing in my chest is going to swallow me whole. Instead, I reach for the blanket draped across the foot of the bed and wrap it over my shoulders. Move to the doorway and the dark house beyond.

  “Is it always going to be like this?”

  The question stops me short. “Like what?”

  “Now isn’t the time for coy.”

  I know it’s not. I can hear the exhaustion in his tone and know I’m the reason for it. But I still can’t turn around. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

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  The rustling of clothes tells me Kaith stands too. “Your past is yours, and I won’t ask you to dredge up memories you’d rather let be. What I do ask is that you don’t push me away every time they rear up.”

  Once, I would have rejoiced to hear such a request. To have someone care so much they’re willing to see past all the ugly things that rest in my soul.

  Now, I fight the urge to bare my teeth.

  I turn around at last, leaning one shoulder against the doorway and fixing him with a look I know is far from friendly. “I had a nightmare. Is that not allowed?”

  “You know that isn’t what I said.”

  “Then what is?”

  He rubs at his jaw. “How long is it going to take before you trust me with whatever you see in your head?”

  Months. Years. Never. The responses spring up, and I shove them down again. None are helpful, not when this man is the closest I’ve come to something real in a long time.

  So I settle for the kindest piece of truth I can offer. “At least a little longer.”

  He crosses his arms over his chest and sighs. “All right. Let me know if there’s anything I can do for you.”

  The words are laced with defeat, and every syllable claws at the parts of me that should care. That used to care.

  I can’t do this. Not now, not to him.

  “I could use a hug.”

  A muscle in his jaw moves. No doubt ready to point out he tried that, and I all but shoved him away. But he must think better of it, because he opens his arms and tilts his head in a familiar way.

  I rush forward before I can hurt him again. His arms circle my shoulders and he pulls me in tight, his heart beating too fast beneath my ear. I feel his mouth press into my hair, just to the side of the short, curved horns that rise from my head.

  “I’m sorry,” I mumble into his warm shirt. Because I am, yes, but mostly because I know he wants to hear it.

  His hands tighten against my back. “I only wish you didn’t feel as though you had to hide from me.”

  I want to say it’s not him, it’s everyone. It’s not this, it’s that I’m not the same person I once was, and I probably never will be again.

  But none of that fits into something I can speak, so I lift myself onto my toes and press my mouth to his.

  Kaith responds as if I am made of spun glass. His hands fall to my waist, holding me so lightly he might as well not be there at all. His lips are gentle against mine, his whole body curving as if he could shelter me from every last terrifying thing in my head.

  It’s far too close to something I’m not capable of, so I fist my hands in his shirt and yank.

  We both fall. A noise of surprise leaves Kaith, but I’m already stumbling backwards, my shoulders finding the wall behind me. He hardly stops himself from crashing into me, one hand landing on either side of my head. My fingers clench in the shirt, pulling him down before he can do something so stupid as try to talk about it.

  His mouth meets mine, and it’s a clash of lips and tongue and teeth. Nothing gentle now, only need and satisfaction, two bodies with the same goal and the same driving urgency to get there.

  He lifts me into his arms, and I sigh in relief as I wrap my legs around his waist. Because this is easy. This isn’t trying to find words I don’t have or forcing away feelings I shouldn’t. This is a song to which I know every note, a place I can stop fucking thinking and just be.

  Kaith sinks his teeth into my bottom lip. I trail my hands down his neck, over his chest, to the hem of his shirt. The fabric bunches in my hands, stretching as I pull to get it over his head. Kaith groans low in his throat, a wicked smile curling the edges of his lips.

  I like that smile. It leads exactly where I’m trying to go.

  Kaith pauses, eyes moving over my face. His cheeks are flushed, his pupils wide enough to drink from. “You’re beautiful.”

  “Save the compliments for later.”

  He shakes his head. “I’m serious, Vitani. I could look at you for the rest of my life.”

  Everything inside of me turns to stone.

  Kaith sees it. Alarm flares in the set of his mouth. “What?”

  “Put me down.”

  He does, releasing me as if he’s burned me. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. It’s just—I need a minute.”

  I turn away from him, from the care in his eyes, from the whole fucking thing. My head screams, my chest burning like I’m stuck beneath the summer floods. I force a breath through my nose, but the water keeps coming, crashing over my head again and again and again.

  “What did I do?” Panic laces Kaith’s voice.

  He doesn’t know. He hasn’t put the pieces together. I should be relieved, should scramble for a way to fix this, but all I really want to do is vomit.

  The world turns. My knees hit the ground, then my shoulder and my head. Kaith yells my name, and it takes longer than it should to realize I fell. The floor is cool, the wooden boards beneath my cheek offering the first soothing thing since I woke up with a too-familiar smile in my head.

  Kaith hits his knees beside me. “Vitani, talk to me! What happened?”

  Hands find my shoulders, sure and soft. He guides me to lay on one side, and a moment later the warm tingle of magic glides under my skin.

  He thinks I’m injured. That I fell because my body gave out on me. I don’t know how I’m going to tell him there’s nothing here he can fix, even though he’s been trying for months.

  Moving goes against every want I could possibly have, but I do it. I take his hand in mine and squeeze. Words are difficult, but I force them out, my voice choked. “I’m fine.”

  “Thank the Oaken Father,” Kaith breathes. He sits back on his heels, his chest heaving. “What was that?”

  “Dizzy spell.”

  The words cannot be convincing, but he takes them without question. “Is the room still spinning?”

  “No. I think it’s over now.” It’s a lie. He has to hear it.

  “Can you sit up?”

  I can’t move. I don’t want to move, ever again. Let me close my eyes and stop existing altogether.

  He doesn’t wait for my answer. Hands slide beneath my shoulders and knees, then lift. A moment later my body sinks into feathers and fabric, my pillow dipping beneath the weight of my head.

  Kaith sits beside me, tracing a hand over my back. Offering comfort, support, care—everything I don’t want.

  I move to pull away again, but my muscles don’t listen. My mind has gone somewhere else, no longer speaking the same language as my arms and legs. I shut my eyes, able to accomplish at least that much, but even the dark offers no respite. Blue eyes await me there, a broad smile and a face splashed with so many freckles they look like all the stars in the sky.

  My cheeks are wet before I realize I’m crying. My chest shudders, burning as if I’ve been holding my breath, but I don’t even remember needing air. The sobs come in great, wracking heaves, and there’s nothing I can do to stop them.

  Kaith touches my face, my shoulder, my back, and I flinch away from all of it. He’s speaking, something that might be reassurances and might be fear and might even be anger, but I can’t make sense of it. I know nothing and am nothing and I want no more than to drift to a place where I have not failed everyone I’ve ever tried to care about.

  “It’s all right,” Kaith says softly, his voice too close. “I love you. I’ll be here through whatever this is.”

  Screaming erupts in my head, growing and growing until I scream right along with it.