Once Bitten (An Anya Maynard Novel)

Chapter Sixteen

This was what I asked for right, for Connor to be candid with me, for him not to hold himself back around me? Well then how come after getting what I wanted the only thing I could think about was running away?

“I did it again didn’t I?” Connor asked me with a frown.

“Did…did what?”

He sighed and stepped away from me looking defeated, “made you uncomfortable.”

Well, yeah, he did, but it seemed I had done plenty of the same with him. Not wanting Connor to close himself off to me I just blurted out the first thing I could think of for the sake of keeping the lines open between us, “I’m not uncomfortable I’m scared.”

And regretted it the second it passed my lips.

The look on Connor’s face told me exact how big of a mistake that had been to say, complete self-loathing.

“I knew it.” He huffed and he turned his back to me, once again facing the white world outside.

I didn’t regret saying what I did, only how it made Connor feel. It was the truth after all.

Fix it, my wolf said as she gave me a mental push.

How?

But I already knew.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” I said finally, shuffling my blanket covered self across the space between us to stand before him, or at least next to him. “I heard you say you didn’t know how to do this again, well…I don’t know how to do this at all.”

He dropped the hand that had been gripping his face and he looked to me in confusion. I could admit, it was warranted. “You mean you’re not afraid of me?”

“Maybe at first,” I admitted, keeping along this line of truth I was on, “but not for a while now, no.”

Not after seeing the part of him that he hid from the rest of the world, the one who did care no matter what Steve said. He had tried to hide it from me too, like with the note, crossing out all the words that had made his letter personal. But just the fact that he wrote it showed that he cared, that he wanted to make sure I wasn’t completely freaked out over what he had to know was a traumatic event for me.

“So then what are you afraid of?” He said as he turned to me, his green eyes deep with sincerity.

What was I afraid of? I scrunched my brows together and thought that over carefully. In the end, the answer was very simple, “everything else.”

That caught him by surprise, just a twitch of his lip the only showing of how relieved he was to hear that from me. He reached a hesitant hand out to me, resting it on my arm under my blanket after a couple of restarts. “You have nothing to fear with me Anya,” again he took a step towards me, “nothing,” he said seriously.

“I know, and I believe you when you say that.” I sucked in a deep breath and boldly closed the gap, my heart racing in my chest as I looked up into his eyes, “and I trust you too.”

This time there was no censoring his shock, he was visibly taken aback, “you do?”

“She wouldn’t have let us work alone with you if I couldn’t trust you. I know this now, but she…she knew it before I did.”

He smiled, just a hint of those dimples shadowing his stubbled cheeks. “Us? So you do talk to your wolf?”

I nodded absently, too lost in that beautiful smile to say anything else. I couldn't figure out why he would hide such an exquisite gift from the world. Maybe because of the kind edge it brought to his face, the crinkles at the corners of those stunning green eyes broadcasting nothing short of, well, humanity.