“I never would have asked Penny to come if I’d thought she would hurt any of you. I remember her from when I was a girl, Corb. She was a good friend of my gran’s. My memories of Gran took me to her.”
“So was Hattie. So was Missy.” He tossed the frying pan into the water, and I cringed. Cast iron. Didn’t he know not to wash it with soap and water? I pulled it from the sink and dried it with a paper towel.
“Yes, you’re right about Missy and Hattie. But a coven is thirteen witches. I only knew a few members of Gran’s coven growing up—they were spread out across the south. You think they’re all out to get me?” I stood up a little straighter. “What is the real issue here, Corb? That you aren’t running the show?”
“That you don’t love me,” he whispered.
He couldn’t have caught me more off guard if he’d thrown the frying pan at my head. And those five little words could not have hit harder than said frying pan.
He didn’t turn around, his head lowered with his chin to his chest. “I’m a siren, Bree. Love doesn’t come to us the same way it does to the rest of the supernatural world. We rarely get to be with one person—our very nature won’t allow it. We flit between relationships and people all the time, and I’ve always been fine with that. But with you . . . you consume my thoughts. I can’t get you out of my head, and you don’t seem to feel the same way. It’s eating me up inside.”
I stood there stunned, and he took my silence and ran with it.
“Feish keeps saying that you belong with Crash. I don’t know if that’s true, maybe you believe it. Either way, it doesn’t matter. I can’t walk away from you. Before, I thought I could share you, but now I . . . I don’t think I can. I don’t understand it. It’s like you’re calling to the siren side of me, which is impossible, because you aren’t a siren. I want to protect you, but you keep throwing yourself into danger as if you don’t care if you live or die.”
I went to stand next to him. His hands were buried in the water, his forearms showing every line of tension in his body as the muscles flexed and twitched, his head bowed as if he couldn’t even look at me. “I don’t particularly care to die, at least not yet. I mean, if that was the case, I would have just refused the ride out of the jail.”
He didn’t laugh.
Shit, I was shit at this. I bit my lower lip and then plunged in. “Corb, I don’t know what to say. You have to know that I care about you, that you are an important part of my life, but love isn’t on the table right now. Not for you, and. . .” I swallowed hard. “I don’t think for Crash either.”
Some of the tension flowed out of him, and he lifted his head to look at me. “You don’t love him?”
“I’d love to jump on him.” I shrugged and fought the emotions tangling inside of me. “But I’d love to jump on you too. I haven’t had anyone in my bed for a long time, and you’re both so freaking hot, it’s hard to think around you.” The tension ramped back up as I said that last part, his gaze taking on an intensity that I felt all the way to the center of my bones. Which was not the goal here.
I was supposed to be defusing this situation, not making it worse. “I’m just being honest. I don’t know that either of you are good for me. Let’s be straight, neither of you have been particularly upfront with me. You both try and fail. So maybe that’s on me. Maybe I just have shitty instincts when it comes to men. Look at my first choice, after all.”
Corb blew out a big breath. “Yeah, I never understood you and Alan.”
“Honestly, neither did I, and it’s even more baffling now that I know what I gave up for him.” I frowned. “Maybe when we find Gran, I’ll ask her what she remembers about that time, when I left town because I was gaga over him.”
That thought might have stayed with me longer, but I was rudely interrupted.