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‘I failed you, Sam, but it isn’t because I don’t trust you I don’t trust myself I feel safer incoht I could keep everything separate Clean I’ve forgotten how to think of other people in my life If I ever knew’

She wasn’t i the bleak viciousness in his voice and her resentroped in the dark and found his hand, braced on the bed

‘You did You do But you’re not just in e that beganlike yours with Dora, we ether, it seee But this Being the author of those books is at the heart of who you are Who we are’

‘I know that That is the problem, Sam’

‘Tell e’

His hand was tense under hers, then it turned, skiown Her body lit like a firefly, so hot and ready she had to stop herself fro away from his touch

‘Those books are all I have left A hy doesn’t risk his one safe haven to go for a swim’

All I have left

His words sheared through her as viciously as the heat

You have me now

She was so tempted to say the words, but did not want them handed back to her, by word or by deed She was too lonely to weather that rejection

She also wanted to throw it back at him—those books were all I had left of myself, too They were the one corner of the world that was mine and filled with pleasure and anticipation and vivid life, and now

And now I don’t knohat to think

She was torn between turning her back on hi him to her so fiercely he couldn’t try to keep secrets from her But those desires were from old Sam and older Sam She didn’t want to be either at the moment

So she turned over her arers It ahtly he could touch and how potently As if all those years treating precious antiquities under Poppy’s tutelage were eh and boisterous, his hands everywhere at once, his body heavy on hers But Edge could send her body heavenwardsher arm

A shiver ran through her, her legs stretching under its force She reached for hi the the sensitive cores of her palms He bent and pressed his mouth to the crook of her elbow, his breath warht on water, but his next words were rough and angry