Kent’s fist caught him in the jaw. The sharp crack of flesh against flesh was something he heard both externally and internally. Acrid warmth filled his mouth. It was low—he knew it and didn’t care—but he spit the blood and saliva in Kent’s face. The guy startled, giving Xander an opening. He bucked, knocking Kent off balance, and then flipped the guy over, landing on top.
Kent knew the rules. He wrestled Xander for top. Top being more important than landing any blows. They went into an alligator roll. The world flipped over on itself again and again as they battled for primary position. Xander lost all sense of direction, of up and down, top and bottom.
The spinning stopped. Kent crushed Xander’s skull between his hands and slammed his head back. Twinkling stars of pain burst in his vision. Guess he was on bottom. He punched the guy in the ribs. Heard a satisfying grunt.
Isleen shouted, but Xander’s brain wasn’t working fast enough to understand her words. His gaze found her. The BCI guy—the one Xander didn’t know—held her from behind, arms around her, pinning her hands to her sides. She fought his grip, throwing her head back to butt him, but he was too tall and she hit his chest.
Part of Xander understood why the guy was holding her. He was trying to keep her away from the two grown-ass men going at it with their fists.
Pain exploded in his cheek. Spit and blood slung from his mouth. Kent had used Xander’s distraction to get in another shot.
The other part of Xander—the Bastard in His Brain—didn’t understand logic. All he saw was someone holding Isleen against her will. She’d been there, done that, and he’d be damned if he’d let anyone ever hurt her again.
Xander’s world went white, Bastard in His Brain officially in control. The only color that existed was Isleen. Quick—one, two—he landed a double punch to Kent’s ribs, then threw him off as if he weighed no more than a toddler. Xander was off the ground and in front of Isleen before any of them had a chance to react. He popped his fist into the BCI guy’s nose and snatched Isleen to his chest, so the guy wouldn’t take her down with him.
And he did go down. Fell straight back. Unconscious.
“Don’t fucking touch her.” He spat the words at the world, blood dripping from the side of his mouth and over his jaw, then sliding down his neck. Everything had gone still and silent.
“Xander…” Isleen reached up to him, sticking her hand in the mess on his face. He flinched away from her, but the moment she touched him, everything changed. The Bastard in His Brain receded, taking all Xander’s tension and anger with him. The hundred points of pain in his body eased and vanished. A cooling tingle spread through him. Was this what she felt when he took her pain away? Was this her healing him?
“You feel this?” he whispered, his gaze locked on her. “This is why you can’t leave. We are special together.”
Her chin quivered, and water glistened in her eyes. “I had a nightmare. You died.” She choked on the words. “I’m given these dreams in order to save lives. To stop these bad things from happening. It’s my duty. So I will stop this dream from happening, but the only way is to find the guy who killed Gran. And use what I saw in the dream to stay away from any situation that may re-create what happened. So I can’t be around you at night. I have to leave.” Truth resonated in each of her words.
His naive heart buoyed inside his chest. She had been trying to protect him, not leave him.
“Baby, I’ll be all right. We’ll be all right. But I need you to trust me.”
“I do trust you, but that’s not what this is about. It’s about my faith in a story. I want to believe the Fearless and Bear story. I want it all to be true. It feels like it should be true, but is it fact? No, I can’t take a chance with your life. What I dreamed… You wouldn’t be able to come back from it. You’d be dead. I couldn’t live with myself if you died and I didn’t prevent it.”
He wanted to argue with her, deny her words, but he didn’t have a logical comeback.
She gripped his face with both of her hands and stared him in the eyes. “I don’t want to leave you. I have to leave you. Or else you could die.”
Pain swam dark and deep inside her beautiful eyes, and he knew some of it—his refusal to let her go—was caused by him. That almost broke him. He had sworn never to hurt her. He fell to his knees, wrapped his arms around her waist, and pressed the side of his face to her abdomen. He opened his mouth to apologize, but that’s not what came out. “I love you.”
The night insects, all the people around them, even the stars in the sky seemed to stop and pay homage to the words torn out of his soul.
“Xander…” She started crying, quiet sounds so filled with anguish that they punctured his heart. “I love you too. I always have. From my first dream of you. That’s why I have to go.”
Chapter 19