Page 75 of The Gathering
Twenty-eight. So perfect. What else did he need to know about her? “When do you marry a soldier?”
Damn. Wrong fucking question.
“Very soon,” she said, her happy tone forced as she faced the stove. “But we’re not getting the same kind of soldier I learned. These are base models we’re told. Not as complex.” She smiled a little. “I’m happy about it,” she said, clearly a confession.
“Why?” he wondered, the topic bothering the fuck out of his guts.
“Well, it gives us time to adjust before… other requirements. And if they perform well enough, we’re told there may not even be a requirement to evolve them.”
And that was a definite relief to her. Which meant she didn’t want to marry in the way they were being asked to. And why would they be, they were fucking nuns.
“Your biggest virtue?” he asked, ready to get back to her smiles.
She gave him a small one while staring at the fire.
“You have so many, it’s hard to pick, I realize.”
Her laugh split the silence and lasted long enough to have him chuckling.
“Should I list them off?” he offered.
“Merciless optimism,” she suddenly settled on with a beaming smile.
Wow. “I love that term.”
“Oh, you say that now,” she warned with snickers. “I’m brutally optimistic and not everybody can handle that.”
“Pretty sure that’s actually a superpower,” Jek informed back.
She sucked in a huge breath, amazed. “I’m using that!” she declared, pointing at him. “Thank you very much! It isverypowerful!”
“You’re not even trying I’m sure, and I’m sitting here ridiculously hopeful.”
She found that so funny then finally asked, “What are you hopeful about?”
He looked right at her, his tongue held by a habitual silence. “That isolation may be more miserable than it is safe.”
He watched the green in her hazel eyes melt with compassion, putting him in a fire he never went near. “Is that what you fear?”
He sat there, gaze-locked with an angel he couldn’t turn away from. Couldn’t be anything but wide open. “Yes.”
She nodded a little, the smile tugging the edge of her mouth an anchor in his chest. “Me too,” she whispered, holding his stare and his breath.
She lowered her eyes. Then raised them to the fire. “Fear is my vice,” she confessed quietly.
He studied her profile, wondering over that tone. “But that doesn’t bother you,” he realized, getting a soft curve on her mouth.
“No,” she said simply. “I have embraced it. Like Christ embraced the cross.” She stared at her lap. “Fear can be a bridge.” She cast him a secret grin. “When I do the things I fear, I’m being a bridge between light and darkness. Maybe I’m being the only path for somebody trapped and lost? And isn’t that the greatest power to have? The greatest reward?” She turned fullytoward him, back to full smiles, resting her arm on the back of the chair. “Are you done with your questions?”
“Not hardly,” he said, so fucking in awe with her. And ready to find out what exactly she feared. “Have you ever been in love?”
She shook her head with no regret. “Not with a man.”
Something tight in him let go with that answer. “How old were you when you became a nun?”
“Twenty.”
He stared at her while darker questions niggled at him. “Do you know that I’ll do whatever it takes to protect you?”
