I curl my fingers into Griffin’s tunic. My hands are trapped between us against his solid chest, and his heartbeat thuds fast and hard against my knuckles. I ache to hold him. I’m terrified to let myself. I’m not sure I could survive losing him twice.
“I couldn’t find you,” he rasps, his face still buried against my neck. “All yesterday. All night. All day again. It’s past midnight.”
“I slept that long?” Healing requires extended periods of sleep, and my stomach was still sore the last time I woke up…a day and a half ago? It doesn’t hurt anymore. But I doubt that’s why I slept so deeply. I’ve always been good at denial. I didn’t know I’m such an expert that I can crawl into an abandoned room and put myself into a coma.
“All your things were gone, like you never even existed. I searched the castle. The woods. The city. The circus.”
Anxiety spikes inside of me. “Oh Gods. Selena.” My sort of adoptive mother threatened Griffin with a variety of fates worse than death if he ever let anything happen to me. “What did she do?”
He grunts, respect mixed with a certain amount of wariness in the sound. “She just about eviscerated me with her eyes alone. She looked at me, and I swear to the Gods, I felt my gut heating up and twisting around.”
I have no trouble believing that, which makes Selena one of the scariest people I know. The owner of the traveling circus where I took refuge for nearly eight years, Selena is overprotective of me almost to a fault and not particularly keen on Griffin—or my choosing to stay with him. In all fairness, he did snatch me out from under her nose, an abduction I wasn’t exactly on board with for a long time, either—to say the least.
Without letting go of me, Griffin sits on the edge of the bed and pulls me onto his lap. “I thought…” He clears his throat, his grip on me tightening. “I thought you’d turned invisible and left.”
And I thought he’d never hold me like this again, crushing me against his body like it’s physically impossible to let me go. For the first time in my life, I’m ecstatic to be wrong. “I can’t do that.”
Pulling back slightly, Griffin searches my face. “You can’t?”
I cup his jaw, needing to feel his raw masculinity under my hand, and he subtly, maybe unconsciously, leans into my touch.
“I could go for a walk and then come back. Go training. Shopping. Visiting. But if my intention is really to leave you, I probably can’t get farther than the castle gate. I vowed to live with you, or die trying. I can’t leave you unless…” I audibly swallow, sudden nerves making my stomach flip over. “Unless you release me from my vow.”
“Never release you.” Griffin’s stark, harsh, wonderful truth sears me with its intensity. I chose him. I chose us. I don’t want to be let go.
“And my vow to you remains, Cat. Just as binding as yours.” His words ring with truth, and forever sings through me on a ripple of magic—a promise he’ll never break.
A hard drumming starts in my chest. It builds, battering the wall I built around my heart until the fragile barrier explodes outward in a shattering of fire through ice.
I spear my hands into Griffin’s hair, using his inky locks to hold him tight. “But you said you were done with me.”
“How could you think that?” He gives me a shake that’s both gentle and frantic. “I love you like a man insane.”
My breath hitches. Tears prick my eyes, and I blink them back. “You said you couldn’t be with me.”
Griffin looks confused. Then angry. “I couldn’t be with you right then. You were spouting nonsense that was making me crazy—things about us not belonging together. I was fuming and…not in control of myself. I hurt you, so I left. I walked out the door so I wouldn’t hurt you again, but that never meant I wasn’t coming back.”
I gape at him, the most horrible knot unraveling in my chest. “Gods, I’m an idiot!”
Shaking his head, Griffin smoothes my hair back. “I’m sorry for what you thought. For what I made you think.”
“No. I’m sorry. If I didn’t come from a completely deranged and homicidal family, I might actually understand relationships.” Maybe I wouldn’t have taken the worst possible meaning from Griffin’s words. Maybe I’d have given him the benefit of the doubt, and just maybe, I’d have put more faith in us.
Griffin gently holds my head in his hands. His touch is soothing, but his voice suddenly cuts like a knife. “You lied to me. You didn’t trust me. I hate that.”
“I do trust you!”
“Then why? Why hide from me?”
I open my mouth to try to explain, but nothing comes out. Any words that are even remotely sufficient stick in my throat.
“I need an answer, Cat. Don’t think you have a choice.” Griffin’s hands drop away from me, leaving me cold. Flat eyes. Flat voice. When he looks like that, he gets what he wants.
I swallow hard. “I didn’t want you to leave me.”
If possible, Griffin turns even more stone-faced. “Like I said—no trust.”
“That’s not true! But look at you. At your family. Then look at me and mine. I’m ashamed. And I should be!”
“You’re not them.”
I laugh. It’s bitter and shaky. “I’m not them. But I’m something.” Something I don’t want to think about. Denial is an old friend.