Page 233 of Forged in the Fire
“Brinley.” I wheezed it, no way to staunch the flow of grief. I didn’t know if it was fueled by hers or if it was wholly mine.
This need that thrummed and throbbed. Something greater than the physical. A part that I didn’t recognize.
Brinley took it as an apology, and she sniffled, clearly working to shore up the pain.
“He’s so perfect,” she whispered, barely turning toward me. The gold flecks of her eyes flashed in the bare radiance of the nightlight. “I had no idea I could feel this way about a child who doesn’t belong to me, but God, I love him so much.”
The bones in my chest creaked with the pressure.
“Brinley,” I said again. That time it was a plea.
She barely shook her head. “It’s my fault. I knew. I mean, God, I’ve only been here for little more than two weeks, and I let myself go. I was the fool who let this place invade. The one who let your family invade. The one who letyouinvade.”
Her brow pinched. “But I don’t regret it. Sometimes we have to let ourselves feel—wholly and without reserve, the pain and loss included—to find who we really are.”
She inhaled a stuttered breath. “And I’ve been running from the pain for so long, fighting and fighting and barely surviving, that I forgot who I wanted to be. I lost her, Silas. I lost her behind the walls and armor I built around myself. I lost the hope and the belief and the joy of dreaming. And I want to be her, Silas. And maybe because of you all, I finally might be.”
“Brinley.” Her name hemorrhaged from my mouth, bleeding like a fatal wound, and I took another step forward. I realized Iwas basically chanting her name, unable to process or formulate the real chaos toiling in my conscience.
Her words were daggers that impaled. Arrowing through to the hidden places that had rotted and festered in the depths of me for what felt like a million years.
A different lifetime.
Sounded about right considering the good parts of me had died the day my mother had.
And fuck, because of Brinley, flickers of them had been rekindled.
“I want to give that to you.” The admission was grit, and I fisted my hands at my sides to keep myself from reaching out and taking what felt like mine.
Her lips trembled. “Do you?”
There was her fire.
A challenge in the lilt of her chin.
“If I were different?—”
Her huff cut me off.
“If you were different? I don’t want you to be different. I fell for the man standing right here in front of me.”
I nearly bowed at her confession, and the connection that screamed between us burned a hole through the middle of me.
A keening wire that fought to draw us together.
I got the panicked sense I’d die if I didn’t do something to fill it.
She lifted that fierce chin higher. “Because of that man? Standing here? I’m no longer afraid.”
It was me who was afraid. Terrified of what she made me feel. Of what she made me want. The outright control she exerted over me.
I was the fucking president of a violent MC. The spearhead of our underbelly. The one who picked and chose who survived and who met death.
I’d cut down a host of demons and razed a legion of monsters. I’d been marked. Had a score of bounties on my head.
And all it took was this one fiery woman to bring me to my knees.
Wildfire.
