“Stop what?” I said, jerking backward and out of his arms for real. I stumbled to my feet, my hair falling into my face and covering my eyes, my cheeks hot with tears I could no longer hold back.
“Stop doing this to yourself,” Chase said, his voice throaty and low. “Stop telling yourself that this is your fault.”
“This is my fault.”
He was on his feet now, coming toward me, but I took a step back. I didn’t want him to touch me, not when Maddy would never touch Lucas again.
“He’s the one who challenged you.” The fury in Chase’s voice was undeniable. “Lucas did this, Bryn. He challenged you, and you did what you had to do.”
“Did I?” That was the question, the one I hadn’t let myself think for seven long months. “What if there was another way, and I just couldn’t find it? And even if I didn’t have any other choice, I should have known. I should have seen what was happening. I shouldn’t have accepted him into the pack. I shouldn’t have given him the opportunity to challenge me. I should have found a way—”
“A way to what?” Chase didn’t move any closer to me physically, but he kept pushing. He didn’t back down, not even when I stood straighter and met his gaze, head-on, everything I was and everything I was feeling palpable in my stare.
“You should have found a way to what?” he asked again.
I didn’t answer. I didn’t know.
“You can’t keep doing this to yourself, Bryn. I’ve sat back and watched for months. I’ve given you space, but this is tearing you apart, and I can’t just keep sitting here, watching you, doing nothing—”
I hadn’t known—that he’d seen what I’d kept hidden, that not being able to make it better hurt him the same way that it would have hurt me if our positions were reversed.
“You don’t understand, Chase.” The words burst out of my mouth. I couldn’t stop them, even though I wanted to. “You won’t ever understand. You can’t.”
“You think you’re the only one who’s ever made a mistake?” This time, he did take a step toward me. Just one. “Do you think you’re the only person who’s had to make horrible decisions, or who’s felt like everything they do lets someone down?”
He took another step forward.
“Do you think you’re the only person who can’t let themselves feel things, because you feel them too damn much?”
There was something dark in his eyes, something powerful and raw. The edges of his mind blurred against the edges of mine, and I knew that, somehow, in his human life, he’d been where I was now.
“You’re not perfect.” Those were the last words I’d ever expected to hear him say—because from the first moment we’d met, I’d been his everything. “You don’t have to be. You can’t be—no one can—and you need to let it go.”
Maddy, Lucas, the murder in Wyoming—how could I let any of that go?
“You did what you had to do, Bryn, and even if there was another way, if there was something that none of us thought of then and none of us have been able to think of since, if there was some mythical answer that would have made things turn out differently, made them better—you’d still have to let it go.”
We were right next to each other now, his cheek very nearly touching mine.
“People make mistakes, Bryn. It’s what we do.”
I felt the fight drain out of me, and with it, some fraction of the emotion that had been pent up inside of me for months. He put his hands under my chin, angled my head toward his.
My lips met his, and I closed my eyes, my hands reaching around his body and grabbing on to the back of his shirt, like I was holding on for dear life.
That was the most I’d ever heard him say at once, the most of the person he’d been before the Change that I had ever seen. I wanted this, wanted him, but there was still a part of me that couldn’t do what he wanted me to, couldn’t entirely forgive myself, couldn’t let it go.
Because, yes, everyone made mistakes—but when I made them, people died. Chase had lifted some portion of the burden off my shoulders, but there was still a weight there.
There always would be.
His thumbs traced the lines of my jaw. I leaned into his touch, opening my eyes and staring into his, so blue that I could have lost myself in them, if only for a moment.
“Ahem.”
Chase broke away from the kiss, and the two of us turned to our left to see Caroline and Lake standing side by side. Lake had a good nine inches on Caroline, and though they were both blonde, they looked nothing alike—but the expressions on their faces were almost identical.