Page 46 of The Beekeeper

I wasn’t good at accepting compassion, mostly because I’d never deserved it before.

“It doesn’t matter now,” I said roughly because that was the end of it. That was what mattered. Paisley was without her mother, and there was nothing I could do to bring her back, not even in memory.

Biting her lip, Harper nodded and took my empty plate to the sink. Without her attention, I breathed a little deeper. Willed my heartbeat to steady. But before I could fully recover, she was back in front of me, blonde hair wisping around her face like a honey-colored halo. And then she pressed a wet paper towel to the corner of my mouth.

My inhale fired into my chest, stunning me as much as it did her.

Harper froze and then yanked her hand back. “Sorry,” she stammered with a nervous breath. “Habit from cleaning up Paisley…” She held out the paper towel. “You have chocolate around your mouth.”

I locked my jaw and took it from her. In the process, my eyes hooked on the red splotch on the back of her hand. As soon as she went to pull her arm back, I reached out and caught her wrist, holding her hand to my inspection.

It was a reaction without thought. Very on-brand for me.

Harper went completely still, like an insect caught in my fingers, waiting for me to crush her. Like I hadn’t done that enough already.

I wiped my mouth and inspected her sting. My fault. I’d startled her which scared the bee, and Harper had paid the price.

“I’m sorry,” I said, losing myself even farther in how small her hand was in mine—how the red patch practically shouted asshole at me.

“I know,” she murmured, her voice pained. She went to pull her hand away, “It’s⁠—”

“Don’t say it’s fine,” I growled at her, my eyes colliding with her soft ones. God, even the color of her irises was cozy and warm, like a blanket on a cold day. Like a blanket on my whole life. “Tell me what I can do to make it up to you.”

I felt her eyes leave mine, like the pop of a magnet snapping free. They roamed over my face. My creased brows. My tight jaw. My drawn lips. And there…fuck, there they lingered.

Harper stared at my mouth like it wasn’t the knife that kept on cutting her. The weapon that kept on wounding her.

“Tell me what you want, Harper,” I ordered, aching to hear what was written all over her face.

Her mouth snapped shut and, blinking quickly, she looked back up. “I don’t need anything, Blaze. I’ve been stung plenty of times before. Really⁠—”

“Say it.” There was a different kind of anger in my tone now. Anger spawned from ache—an ache for her I’d tried to incinerate with hate. One I’d tried to smother out with distance and indifference. And most recently, one I’d tried to dismantle with logic and warnings…and lots of cold showers.

“Say. It,” I ordered and stepped closer, her body coming flush with mine.

I stifled a groan with a bottomless breath, sucking her into my lungs like she was a goddamn line of coke and I, a man desperate for one last forbidden high.

Fuck, I was breaking all the rules of recovery.

“Say it, Harper,” I ordered roughly, her face swimming in front of mine, I wanted her so badly. Just tell me to kiss you.

“I can’t,” she said, her voice no more than a whisper.

I palmed the side of her neck, pinning my thumb under her chin and holding her head in place. “Why?”

Lightning flashed outside, the whole room mimicking daytime for a single second. In the light, I caught the almost invisible tremble of her lip, and damn if it wasn’t like a knife to my chest.

And then it darkened again; the room and her voice.

“Because you hate me,” she said, her voice like a shadow.

I shuddered. I deserved that. A hoarse chuckle broke from my chest as I lowered my forehead to hers. “You think I do this with people I hate?”

“I lied to you.”

I lowered my forehead to hers. “I lied to you first.” My voice was heavy with the truth—the anchor of my anger. It wasn’t that she’d hid her knowledge of my identity from me; it was that I’d kept who I was from her in the first place.

Outside, there was another sky-splitting boom of thunder. Everything around us rattled and then it all went dark.