Chapter 38

THIRTY-EIGHT

Natalia

I’ve been with my parents for a week, and the inevitable restlessness is setting in. I’m trying to relax, and I slept well the first few nights, but now insomnia is back. No nightmares, but instead of the peace I’d been seeking, there’s just a strange feeling of discontent.

I don’t belong here.

This will always be my childhood home, but it’s not home . It’s not where I live or work or play. Or where Casey and I spend time giggling over something we see on TV. It’s definitely not the home where I sleep next to or make love with Ryan.

Ryan .

I miss him.

So much it hurts.

But I’m still struggling.

I haven’t come to any conclusions or figured out who I want to be when I grow up. Hell, at this point, I don’t even feel like a grownup.

I just feel alone.

My parents have been much more supportive than I thought they’d be, not nagging me about anything and only offering advice when I ask. But I know they’re worried. Femke checks in on me a lot, her face pinched with concern, and my mother is trying to singlehandedly feed me enough to last me the next year.

Last night’s texts from Ryan don’t help.

In fact, they make everything worse.

Reading that he loves me, that he’s sorry and wants to talk, guts me. I want to talk, touch him, be with him again, but I have to be sure. About everything. I know it won’t work if I leave the Protectors and he joins them, but I can’t ask him not to. Not when he’s apparently left everything to become one of us.

Besides, I don’t know what that would mean for us as a couple. Would he resent me for asking him to quit? And if he does, we would almost definitely have to move to the U.S. so he can work, and I don’t know what I would do.

I could be a bodyguard for Westfield he’s just a small-town drunk who’s lost his way. I don’t believe he would hurt my mother beyond some cuts and bruises, and when he sobers up, he’ll probably be mortified. But that’s neither here nor there.

The bigger question is why I function so well in a crisis but then spiral afterward. I don’t think the others do. Certainly not Sandor or Joe or even Lennox.

So why me? What am I doing wrong?

Or is this simply how I’m built?

I doze off, since I didn’t sleep very well last night, and wake up several hours later.

I hurry to get dressed again, hoping Pieter didn’t cause anymore trouble.

There are voices in the kitchen, more than just my parents, and I hesitate, wondering if Pieter somehow got free.

But no.

I bite my lip.

I’d know that voice anywhere.

Ryan is here.