Holidays are Hell

Warren swallowed hard. "I've wished you dead."

"And I, you," she said matter-of-factly, stepping closer. Warren opened his mouth, but she put a finger to his lips and held it there. "It's not the same thing, and I'm willing to bet my life that the Tulpa feels the same."

His face crumpled in on itself and he shook off her touch. "You would compare me to him?"

"I didn't mean that—"

"You said it. Which means you were thinking it. And we both know it's the thought that counts, don't we?"

That's what they'd told one another when she had returned to his arms, his bed. It was the thought that counted most. It was the most powerful thing in the universe.

"Warren…" she began to protest, but stopped.

"What?" he said shortly.

"You're right," Zoe said, and the surprise that flashed across his face must have mirrored her own. She laughed mirthlessly. "Maybe I am toxic. But I had to stop feeling anything for anyone in the time I was with the Tulpa. I couldn't just turn it back on when I returned to the sanctuary. I had to close down because I needed to save a small place inside of me that was mine alone." She'd been a possession, she remembered with a shudder, she'd belonged entirely to the Tulpa. "Sometimes I even forgot why I was there—that I was even, or ever had been, super."

She backed up and sank to the edge of the bed, realizing for the first time that it was true. She'd disappeared into her role as the Tulpa's woman and instead of remembering that she had chosen to be there—that she could choose to leave—she'd begun to feel small and weak, like a shell with only the pretty memory of something vital living inside. As for her idea of love, well, the Tulpa had twisted that as well. She'd had to stop feeling real love at all just to survive it.

Zoe looked up when she felt Warren's weight drop down beside her. "Whatever he took from you, Zoe, you gave willingly. You had to have seen and felt it happening."

"So did you," she said sharply, wiping at her eyes.

"And what was I supposed to do?" he shifted, putting distance between them without really moving. "I couldn't contact you, and even if I did I couldn't order your withdrawal, nullifying all the years you'd put in up to that point. Do you realize you've spent more accumulated years outside of the sanctuary than in it? You grew up there, but it's not your home. Your home is your will and desire, and what you want. It's all that matters. It's all that ever mattered."

She turned toward him, and after a long moment, lifted her tear-streaked face to his. "You mattered."

It wasn't what he'd expected, and he jerked back before he could stop himself. She stayed him with a hand on his arm, and when he didn't shake it off—just swallowed hard as he saw her intent—she shifted closer. Ran her hand up his shoulder to curl around his neck. Used the same smooth, liquid motion she had before she was reduced to mortality to pinion around, above, and upon him; the weak cradling the strong as a tear raced down his moonlit cheek.

"You mattered," she whispered again, and wrapped her limbs around him so she wouldn't have to see it, put her head on his chest and shut her eyes, resting there until his arms finally came up to encircle her.

This, she thought, was home.

She sucked in a deep breath, and scented only what her mortal nose would allow, the menthol rub he used on his bad leg, the fainter scent of his soap, and beneath it all, the warm, earthy wisp of the man she loved. She tilted her head, pressing her lips against the first available patch of bare flesh that offered itself to her, his biceps.

"I missed this so," she murmured, voice muffled.

"My arm?" His voice was softly teasing, as it used to be.

She'd missed that, too, she realized with a smile. Pulling away to peer into his face, dry now, doe-brown eyes deep pools of softness in the moonlit room, she knew that no place—sanctuary, safe house, mansion or motels—was more linked in her mind with home than his arms. She straightened her spine and pressed into him so that he sucked in a needy breath. They were fused at hips, her small breasts pressed against his wider chest, and he tilted his jaw up to find her lips. The need in that first kiss illuminated all the hard words between them, showing them for what they really were: smoke. Camouflage to protect the emotion they couldn't put to words; the "I love yous" and "I miss yous" and mostly "I can't… not without you."

So they abandoned words for the tangible, and Zoe found she'd been missing a lot more than just his arms.