Heir to a Desert Legacy - By Maisey Yates Page 0,66
he had felt a tug in his soul that had echoed through his entire being.
Panic had followed, a panic he couldn’t understand or stop. It was still clawing at him, squeezing his throat, icy fingers wrapped around his neck. Pain. Pain from the past, what might have been, and a new pain, one borne of fresh desire, for things that were so near and yet still beyond him.
He had been avoiding her since that night on the beach, since he’d bared himself to her as he’d done. Told her about Sura. Lost all of his control.
Hurt her. Physically. Emotionally.
It had been a moment of freedom, being in her arms. A quiet moment when he’d felt one with himself. But the payment demanded for it had been swift and severe. The evidence of what he’d done to her with his loss of reserve.
But not just that. The evidence of how quickly the years of conditioning could be undone, all because of a woman. Because of Chloe.
And he had run from it. He’d tried to keep her from following by scaring her. Scaring her with the truth. Only she’d followed. She hadn’t given up. His Chloe was stubborn. Stubborn and so very brave.
Part of him wanted to hold her to him. To have her. Possess her.
But there was the part of him, the part that still possessed humanity, that knew he couldn’t. Knew he would give her nothing. He would try, endlessly, to fill himself with her, with her life, her light. And he would steal it all from her, giving nothing back.
“Sayid?” Chloe appeared in the doorway of his room.
“What are you doing here, Chloe?”
“I put Aden down for the night and I figured I’d come and see what the hell your problem is. Is that okay?”
“No. It’s not. Go away.”
“Why? Because I’m good enough to screw on the beach, but not good enough to talk to?”
“We talked already,” he said.
“No. You talked. You told me what I felt, what I thought, who I was. And you were wrong, about all of it. So now I’m going to talk, and I’m going to tell you about you.”
“Go,” he bit out. “Go now, Chloe.”
“No. Sayid, you think you can’t feel? You’re a liar. You feel. You feel when you touch me. You feel when you hold Aden. You feel right now. You’re afraid. I know you are.”
“You think you know what’s going on inside of me, Chloe? You don’t even want to know. You think you’ve seen darkness? You haven’t seen what I’ve seen. You haven’t done what I’ve done. I have killed men, Chloe, with my bare hands when necessary. And I’ve done it without remorse or regret, because it was for my country, for my people. The only way I could do that was by letting go.”
“Everybody feels something, Sayid. Even a sociopath feels satisfaction in the deeds he commits, so don’t try and tell me you simply feel nothing.”
“All right, Chloe, all right, is this what you want to do? You want to share? You want me to share with you?”
She crossed her arms beneath her breasts. “Yes.”
He nodded once. “You’re right. I do feel. I feel one thing. Do you want to know what it is?”
She met his eyes, her expression determined. “Tell me.”
“I’m angry. All the time.” He hadn’t realized it until he’d said it. “At everything, everyone. At life. At the lot I was given. I feed it, and it keeps me going. It’s worse than nothing, because it consumes everything beautiful in life. Anger devours everything else, because happiness can’t exist with it. Love cannot exist with it.”
“And the day you lost Sura, and the future you imagined with her, you decided to be angry rather than be in pain. I understand that. But shouldn’t you let it go?”
“You think this is about Sura? About the baby? I let it go long ago. I had to. But the lesson remains.”
“You feel more than that, I know you do.”
“I won’t allow it,” he bit out. “I can’t.”
“Why?”
“It isn’t about what I want, it never has been. It’s about Attar. It’s about protecting my people, at the expense of myself. There is no other way. You serve yourself, or you serve others, but you cannot do both.”
“I don’t believe it. It’s not about your people, it’s about protecting you. That’s all it’s ever been about. Because you tasted loss, hideous, unspeakable loss, and you decided you would never experience it again.”
“You think me a coward?”
“No more than