The Essence

I smiled as I scooted over, despite the fact that there was plenty of room on the bench beside me.

She sat, and we were quiet for a long while. Avonlea, like Sabara, had become permanent. She’d taken a liking to my father—or rather he to her—and he’d started mentoring her in the kitchens. I doubted she needed the tutelage, especially since I’d tasted her cooking, but she seemed to enjoy his company. I think, in a peculiar way, a part of her missed Floss. He had been the father she’d never had.

“Everyone’ll get over it, you know? Even Angelina,” she said at last.

I just shrugged, unconvinced. I’d thought that once too, especially about my sister. I thought, once the dust had settled and we’d found Eden injured but alive, that Angelina would forgive me. Or at least stop looking at me like I was some sort of monster.

But she hadn’t.

Yet I didn’t fault her, not really. Because I realized, it wasn’t me she hated. It was that she no longer knew me, that she could no longer trust whether it was even me she was looking at. “I don’t know. Maybe they shouldn’t. You weren’t there, Avonlea. Maybe I’m too dangerous to be around.”

She snorted and shoved me with her shoulder. “You’re crazy.” And I knew that she, at least, didn’t mean it in the literal sense. “You,” she said, more seriously now, “are the kindest person I’ve ever known.” I glanced up at her, afraid to trust the sincerity in her voice. “You saved me.”

“Charlie, wait.” Max’s voice stopped me just before I slipped inside my bedroom. Zafir wasn’t with me tonight as he and Claude met with Brooklynn to coordinate mounting our defenses at home.

My new guard turned away when Max reached me.

“Xander and Niko are back.” And before I could ask, he shook his head, reading my thoughts. “No word on Sebastian. They lost his trail near Astonia’s border.”

“Dammit.” I exhaled. “So what now?”

“Xander’s leaving in the morning to Astonia. He and Elena were friends once, or at least he thought they were. He wants to ask what her intentions are. He wants to hear it from her directly.”

“Why would she tell him the truth?” I asked.

Max shrugged. “She might not. But then again, she doesn’t have any reason to lie. If she wants you dead, she might as well just admit as much. We’ve already discovered the messages, presumably in her hand, to Brooklynn’s father. Denying it just makes her a liar.”

“And if she doesn’t deny it? If she admits she was behind the plot to have me killed?”

Max came closer to me then, and his nearness made my heart lurch. His hand moved up and down my shoulder, almost absently. “Then we have no choice. We have to protect you.”

I closed my eyes, not wanting it to be a duty—his allegiance. Wanting it to stem from desire.

“It’ll be okay,” he said, misreading my hesitation.

I looked at him again. “I know.”

I turned, then, to go into my room, needing to be alone so I could sort through my tangled emotions.

“Charlie?” he said, pulling me back to face him. “I do love you.” My breath caught on his words . . . words I’d waited so long to hear. His fingertips found mine, just barely. “I just need time. Not much, just enough to get used to . . .” He grinned as he watched the skin beneath his touch ignite. And then he was reaching for me, and his lips were on mine, and we were kissing desperately, and the world faded away around us.

When I finally drew away, just enough so I could breathe again, I glanced up at him, my gaze sheepish. “I thought you needed time,” I teased.

Max’s grip, when he reached for me the second time, was confident. And final. “I lied.”