Page 88 of Once Upon a Fable

Nothing.

Throwing the shovel away, I ducked to cup his cheek.

Don’t!

Don’t you dare be like those stupid girls in movies. You’ve just thrown away your weapon. Do not waste this opportunity.

Run!

I froze with indecision.

I’d wanted this. I’d waited for this exact moment. Yet now that it’d arrived, I felt sick with guilt. Something had happened between us, no matter how much I could argue. Something that shouldn’t have happened between two strangers who’d met when they shouldn’t.

I didn’t belong in his world, and there was no way in hell he would fit in mine.

He was going to kill you, Gem!

My hands balled.

I nodded with determination.

It was him or me.

I did the right thing.

But if I left him here alone, he might die.If he’s not dead already. I might’ve caused brain damage. I would be sentencing him to an excruciating end, lying alone in a forest unconscious.

He groaned, his legs twitching.

See, he’s not dead.

He’s coming to.

RUN!

His bruised hand opened and closed; his eyes squeezed together as he twitched.

He’s fine, see? SEE?

Josh popped into my head. My adorable baby brother who would never forgive me for wasting this escape. I owed it to him to return. I owed it to my mother, to me, to the blessed luck I’d enjoyed all my life.

Time to go.

Drinking in one last look of the man who’d made my body sing all while he’d twisted my mind, I imprinted him.

The wild hair, the muscular chest, the thousands of silvery scars. The pain, the shame, the history that’d carved him from a boy into this hard-edged desperately lonely creature.

My heart broke for him.

My body wept for him.

My socked feet backed away.

And then, I turned and bolted.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

––––––––