Page 27 of Branded By Shadow
I blink hard, but it only makes everything worse.
“No,” I whisper, and I hate how broken it sounds. “No, she wouldn’t just tell me to stop. Not like that. She knows I won’t. She knows…”
My throat closes.
She knows I always come.
That’s the thought I can’t say.
Shadow sees it anyway.
His hand loosens around the phone, but he doesn’t let go. “Talia.”
“No.” I shove at his chest with my free hand. It’s useless. He doesn’t move. “Don’t say my name like that. Don’t make me sound stupid for wanting to believe my sister is alive and well.”
“I’m not.”
“You are. Every time you say maybe, you are.”
“I’m trying to keep you safe, to find out answers. The truth.”
“The truth?” I laugh, and it comes out too sharp. “The truth is I went there, I got shot at, I ran, and now I’m standing in a motel room with a man I don’t know while my sister texts me to abandon her.”
His expression turns dark. “You didn’t abandon her.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know you went into Salazar’s yard alone for her.”
“And left with nothing.”
“You left breathing.”
“That doesn’t feel like enough.”
The words fall between us.
Ugly.
Honest.
Too big for the little room.
Shadow goes still.
Then his hand comes up, slow enough that I could move away if I wanted to.
I don’t.
His palm cups the side of my face, rough and warm, thumb brushing just under my cheekbone.
“Breathe,” he says.
“I am breathing.”
“No, you’re fighting not to break.”
That does it.
