Mack dug deep to find the strength he was going to need to get through this. To keep himself from hurtling himself at her. Sweeping her up and holding her close and taking her hard.
She was better than all of that.
Still, emotion raced his throat. Thick and needy. As desperate as his hands he was curling into fists. “I’m no good for you, Little Bird.”
“And she is? Good for you? Meant for you in a way that I’m not?”
Shame and regret crawled beneath his skin. “She’s nothing to me.”
Izzy choked over a gasp of pain. “If she means nothin’, then what does that make me?” She was pleading, taking a step toward him, her trembling hands pressed in petition to her chest. “I wanted it to be me, Maxon. I wanted to be yours. Your first and your last and your everything. You are my best friend. You’ve always been. But I can’t go on pretendin’ that I don’t ache for you. Need you. Want you in a way that has only ever belonged to you.”
She was killing him.
Word by word. Breath by breath.
“I’m in love with you, Maxon. Don’t you see that? I love you so much. So much that it is ruinin’ me. Tell me that you feel the same way.”
Her confession penetrated like spears. Stakes of grief. He nearly broke beneath the weight of it. Mouth dry, no words on his tongue because he couldn’t form a lie that big.
He just stood there like a bastard, watching heartbreak crack across her face.
She barely nodded, crushed by the understanding.
She shifted her attention to the shed for the barest beat before she looked back at him.
Her voice shook with its own sort of ferocity. “No matter what you feel for me or not, I need you to know, you are so much better than this. You have always been destined for greater things. I hope one day you realize that.”
She pointed her finger at the ground.
At his world.
At his life.
Then she turned around and disappeared into the trees.
Agony clutched his spirit, driving a knife right into his soul.
Empty and vacant as he watched the only person who could ever fill it walk away.
Her presence fading.
He tried to force himself to go into his house. To turn his back. But panic was taking over. He couldn’t stand for her to leave with that look on her face.
He needed . . .
Fuck, he had no clue what he needed. The only thing he knew was he started running, dodging trees and branches as he cut through the forest. He burst through the thicket and out onto the meadow.
He skidded to a stop, chest heaving from the exertion. From the turmoil. From wanting something so bad and not being able to have it.
Izzy whirled around, and those mesmerizing eyes went wide with surprise.
“Maxon,” she rasped.
He hesitated, torn, but then he found he was unable to stop the words from bleeding from his heart. “I feel it, too, Izzy. I do.”
Pain followed the admission. “But this can’t work. You know that it won’t. We come from two different worlds. Are two different people.”
She blinked at him through the wetness in her eyes, and she started to move back in his direction. “Two people who belonged together. It doesn’t matter where we come from just as long as we end up in the same place.”
He swallowed around the thickness in his throat. “I’ll ruin you.”
“You already have.”
He started moving for her, drawn, unable to stop. “I’m terrified of this, Izzy. Of what it means. The only thing I know is my life means nothing without you in it.”
She started running for him, and he was running for her, too.
They met in the middle, and he swept her up.
Relief.
He pressed his face into her hair as he spun her around. Breathed her in. Wild jasmine and the sun. “I love you. I love you so fucking much. So fucking much.”
He held her close, listening to the rapid beat of her heart. The fluttering that promised to carry him away.
“My dragon,” she whispered.
“Little Bird,” he murmured back, chest stretched tight as he stared up at her. “Let’s fly away.”
“Just tell me where you want to go.”
And he was taking her mouth, kissing her soft and slow and with everything he had.
Twirling her around.
Together, they soared.
Twenty-Five
Izzy
With a dull lamp lighting my way, I sat at my desk, hand brushing in frantic strokes over the paper in the notebook I was drawing in. A jumble of designs were bleeding out, all my confusion and hurt and anger at odds with the massive amount of need and want the man had evoked in me.
How could I just let go?
Believe?
Chewing furiously at my bottom lip, I colored and shaded, slashed and sketched and hoped that the images would come to life.