Bones (Bones, #1)

by K.L. Speer

The wind whipped the tears out of her eyes and left them somewhere behind along with her name.

No matter how nicely phrased, I never got an actual choice.

You can survive this, Wolf ordered in my head. Do what you gotta do to survive.

I squeezed my eyes shut, pain lancing through my head. I didn't want to talk. I didn’t want to be here. I didn’t want to be.

“You did all you could.” The whispered words tumbled out of me. “I couldn’t do enough.”

"Bones, you don't have to hide the soft parts of you. Not from me," he murmured. "No matter what's goin' on between us, I will never use them to hurt you.”

“I think about your face when Lana pulled that gun on you. You looked relieved. You were gonna just sit there and let her kill you. An’ all I knew was that I couldn’t let that happen.”

“You wanna be with Zip? That’s fine. Be with Zip. But please, Bones. Please stop pushin’ me away. I’m never gonna try to make you stop caring, ok? It’s one of the most beautiful things about you.”

“Touch her again, and I’ll put a bullet between your eyes,” Trey said in a dark voice I’d never heard him use before.

“Bones, why do you have to save everybody but yourself?”

“I want you to live,” he added, his voice hoarse with emotion. “And yeah, it’s partly ’cause I’m a selfish bastard. I just can’t stand the thought of livin’ in a world without you in it.”

“I know you’re used to people wanting your power, but gods, Bones, all I want is you.”

His laugh felt like sunshine, and I was the godsdamned fool soaking it up like I was starving for it.

“You’re a river, Bones,” he said, squeezing my hands hard to get my attention. “You don’t break, you bend. If someone tries to control you, you find a new way around. People might think you’re just water, might think they have you contained, but you’re strong enough to cut a path through mountain rock and wild enough to wash everythin’ away when you rage.”

Some final hardened part of me cracked in a way I knew I’d never be able to repair, that lonely garden in my chest stretching and growing and turning toward him like he was the godsdamned sun.

"Godsdamnit, Bones, I'm here ’cause I love you," he interrupted in a burst of emotion that shocked me into silence. "Have loved you practically since you saved my life on that rooftop. And I'm not expecting anything of you, but I'm here 'cause I want to be here with you.”

“I’d wait a thousand years for you.” “You’d be long dead in a thousand years,” I said dryly even though my heart pounded. “It’d still be worth it,” he whispered, and then he kissed me.

“Not this. You don’t ever need to apologize for your scars.”

“These scars are proof you survived,” he interrupted softly. “That you walked through fire, and you came out the other side. You’re a godsdamned warrior, Bones, and the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

“I’ll be your home as long as you need.”

Well if I was a roaring river, shifting and unpredictable, Trey was the very mountain below us, steady and constant.

“So it’s better to just refuse to let anyone ever get close to you again?” Fear turned my stomach. “Yes.” “So what’s the point then?” he asked. “What are you surviving for?”

“You look like a fallen star,” Trey said in a low voice.

“Let people in, darlin’. You gotta let ’em in. There are good people out there. Not perfect, but people who are tryin’ to do the right thing and they want to help. You don’t have to be strong all the time. You can lean on me.”

"I know it's a risk, but gods, Bones, don't you want to live for something else besides just survivin'? What's the point if you're too scared to experience all the things that make life worth living? I am scared—fuckin’ terrified, of losing you. I don’t know how much time we have, but I do know I don’t want to miss a single second of lovin’ you.”

I wasn’t ok, and I wasn’t trying to pretend anything different. I was just empty. I didn’t understand what they wanted from