“I want to know how you see her.”
“She’s beautiful,” I said, and I meant it. “She doesn’t know it, but she is. And she’s so—” Fragile. Vulnerable. “—stubborn. She just doesn’t know when to give up.”
“You seem to have that in common.”
We had a lot in common, weird as that might seem; she was from a sheltered, protected place, a family who loved her, a dad who would never betray her, but somehow that had given her an unshakable belief that she could survive anything. I had that, too, but it came from the opposite direction; I knew what it felt like to lose everything, everyone, and understand that it was just me against the darkness.
But it was more than that. Complicated, what I felt for her.
And I didn’t want to look too closely at it. “I try to look after her,” I said. That was meant to be a blowoff, but Goldman seemed to find it more interesting than I’d intended.
“Does she need looking after, do you think?”
“Doesn’t everybody?”
“And your job, the job of all boyfriends, is to protect her,” he said. It almost sounded like my own voice, in my own head. “Is that what you believe?”
“Yeah,” I agreed. No-brainer.
“What do you think Claire would say if she heard that?”
I couldn’t stop myself from smiling, a little. “She’d smack me,” I said. “She doesn’t think she needs a bodyguard—she’s always telling me that.” The smile faded too fast, because a cascade of images burned through my brain, uncontrollable and violent: Claire smiling at me. Claire smiling at Myrnin. Myrnin turning crazy on us, as he always did. And Claire just . . . accepting that. Again.
The scars on her neck, pale and small but obvious to me.
“And yet, you’re angry at her,” Goldman said.
“Bite me,” I snapped. The pressure was doing my head in, and I had to get up, move, stalk the room. My fist wanted to punch something; the wild energy in me didn’t have any way out except through flesh and bone and pain. “You need to stop pushing me, man. I mean it. I don’t want to be paying for repairs around here.”
Goldman was unruffled. He sat comfortably and watched me as I paced the room. If he was scared I’d take it out on him, he didn’t look it. “Are you angry because I made an observation, or because of what I am?”
“Both,” I said. “Hell, I don’t know. Look, can we just get this over with? Call it an hour and let me out of here.”
“You can leave anytime you like, Shane. I’m not stopping you. But your treatment is mandated by the Founder. If you decide not to follow through on your commitments, she is within her rights to rescind your parole and put you behind bars.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time.”
“I know,” he said. There was a world of kindness in those two words, and it derailed the anger train from the tracks. I didn’t want to punch him, but I didn’t want to answer him, either. He was right; I couldn’t just walk out of here, not without consequences. . . . Jail didn’t scare me so much, but there was something that did: losing Claire. Going to jail meant not seeing her, and right now, she was the only light in the world shining in the dark where I lived.
Even if sometimes I hated what I saw reflected in that light.
I had my hand on the doorknob of the office. The place wasn’t locked; I could just turn my wrist, and step over the threshold, and live with all that meant.
I turned my wrist and pulled the door open. The outer office beyond the door was a little cooler, and I closed my eyes as the soft breeze passed over my face.
One step. That was all it would take. One step.
I slowly closed the door and leaned my back against it. “I’m not a coward,” I said.
“I think that is beyond dispute,” he replied. “But physical courage is one thing. Emotional courage to look inside yourself, that is another, and many don’t possess that kind of will. Do you?”
“Not me. My friends all have it. I don’t,” I said. I was thinking about Michael, hanging on quietly, alone, ghostly in a house that had been his family’s home. Grimly trying to survive as half a vampire, hiding the truth from us, never letting me see his fear or his fury. Eve, always full of acid and fun, with all the fragile terror beneath; she never let Morganville win, even though every day she woke up knowing it could be her last. Claire, sure and steady and calm, somehow coming into our little fraternity of screwups and making us whole, each in our own way. Without her, I’d never have had the courage to defy my dad and side with Michael, even though I wanted to do it.