“It was who I was. An executioner,” I cut in, my voice pitching low. “I killed people. Sometimes I didn’t make it quick. Do you know what that makes me?”

She didn’t answer.

I gave her one. “A monster. It makes me a monster.”

“No.” Her hands landed atop mine, and when I started to pull them away, she held on. “You are not a monster, Seth. You did what you had to do. What you were ordered to do.”

“Josie—”

“There are people—mortals—who kill other people every day because they are ordered to do so. Does that make men and women in the military monsters? What about police?” Her slim fingers gripped mine. “And would you have done those things if you hadn’t been ordered?”

Of course I wouldn’t have. I’d learned my lesson well before I got my marching orders, but did that change the last year of my life? No. And it didn’t change everything I had done before then.

“Would you, Seth? Would you have done it if you weren’t made to?”

I closed my eyes and my response was barely above a whisper. “No.”

She squeezed my hands. “It’s terrible. I’m not going to lie and say that it isn’t a big deal, but I know you. You did what you had to do, not because you wanted to. There’s a difference there.” She paused as her hands slid up to my wrists. “I ran over a squirrel once.”

Blinking open my eyes, I drew back as far as she’d let me.

“What?”

“I ran over a squirrel the second time I ever drove a car,” she repeated. “I also hit a deer. And when I was seventeen, I clipped a cat. Before I left for college, I backed into a dog.”

“Gods,” I muttered.

She nodded, lips drooping at the corners. “His name was Buddy and it was a golden retriever. Like, the most friendly of all dogs.”

Oh my gods.

“And the owner’s five-year-old kid saw it. Buddy survived, but I’m kind of like a mass murderer when it comes to animals and me behind the wheel.”

My lips twitched. It wasn’t funny. I had to keep telling myself that. “Babe, that’s not the same thing.”

“I know.” She shrugged. “But still. I’m not happy about it, but it seriously made me feel like an animal serial killer. Like somehow that was my destiny. To kill all the furry, four-legged friends.”

I stared at her. No matter what, she was so…so mortal.

Josie bit down on her lower lip as she worked her hands up to my elbows, her thumbs pressing on the insides. “I have deeper, darker secrets.”

“You do?” My voice was low, rough. The constriction in my chest was lessening. “Did you cut off the heads of your Barbies or something?”

She laughed softly. “No, but I did cut their hair and tried to dye it with markers.”

“Of course,” I murmured.

Rising onto her knees in front of me, she tightened her grip on my elbows, and I was absolutely helpless to move. Made powerless by a girl who thought she had darker secrets than me. “I wished, more than once when I was younger, that I had a different mom. That’s pretty bad.”

I found myself leaning toward her. Our faces separated by scant inches. “I think most people would sympathize with that.”

“Maybe. I’m just pointing out that no one is perfect, especially me.”

Josie was the closest thing to perfect I’d ever met, and she had no idea. The realization was a shot to the chest. When had this happened? When had I gone from being a one-man show, always alone with nothing meaningful, to having this right in front of me, in me? I closed my eyes as I dragged in a deep breath. I don’t even know why I said what I did. Then again, I didn’t know why I’d told Josie all the things I had before. “I don’t feel that way.”

“What?”

When I opened my eyes, she was staring at me with those big, blue ones. “When I’m with you, I don’t feel like a monster. I forget.” And that was the damn truth—a scary truth. “I forget all the things I’ve done that make me not deserve this.”

Josie didn’t respond, and for a long moment, she didn’t move, but then I felt her soft lips brush my forehead. The gentle, chaste touch shocked me, and I jerked back, staring at her. My heart pounded like a jackhammer.

Her smile was hesitant, but her grip on my arms was strong. “You’re staying with me,” she said, flushing pink as she ducked her chin. “It’s settled, like it or not.”

Then she sort of climbed up, forcing me back against the headboard and onto my ass, her movements awkward and shy as she looped her arms around my shoulders. I stiffened as she wiggled down, getting herself comfortable in my lap. Once situated, she grabbed my arms and folded them around her.

All I could do was stare at her, but as seconds turned into minutes, and as my muscles began to relax, I stayed with her.

Chapter 26

“YOU RUN like a girl.”

I scowled at Seth’s back and huffed out, “I am a girl.”

“Doesn’t mean you need to run like one,” he called out, hitting the main pathway that led around the academic buildings.

This time I made a face that didn’t last long, because I felt like I might pass out. Luke had bowed out on the afternoon run. Not that I blamed him. A cold snap had dropped the temps into what felt like lung-freezing territory and I couldn’t feel my face.