Whispers in the Dark - Maya Banks [64]
“I wanted to move out and go to college and I thought my mom was going to have a heart attack over it. She completely freaked. She got so upset that I dropped the subject and continued to live with them. Grace and I took online courses. Eventually we started to get out more in the community, which gave my parents no end to grief, but maybe they realized they had to grant us some freedoms or we’d just move out, and they feared that more than anything.
“Dating was an experience. My dad ran background checks on everyone Grace and I even talked to. He didn’t like us to go anywhere by ourselves. He always taught me and Grace to stick together no matter what. So you can imagine that made having a sex life difficult.”
Nathan scowled. “I’d rather not hear about your sex life.”
Shea laughed. “There wasn’t much of one. Certainly no grand romances. I don’t even think Grace gave it much effort. Certainly not as much as I did. I wanted…I wanted normalcy. I wanted to feel like I was just like any other woman out there.”
“I’ll be more than happy to provide you with your sex life,” Nathan muttered. “And you’re not just like every other woman out there. You’re special. And I don’t mean because of your goddamn abilities.”
This time her smile went soul deep as she looked at how disgruntled—and uncomfortable—he was saying those words.
“Maybe normal is overrated,” she said softly.
“Bet your ass it is. The two of us will never be ‘normal,’ and I’m okay with that.”
She leaned over to kiss his cheek and then laid her head on his shoulder. “What are we going to do, Nathan?”
She said nothing more, because to voice her doubts, all the thoughts she’d already battled, was to make them all the more real, and for just a moment she didn’t want to think of a future—an impossible future—she couldn’t have.
“We fight. We do whatever we have to do to keep you—and Grace—safe.”
It comforted her that he was so resolute and that he now included Grace in his vow to protect. But he was just one man. A man already damaged by fighting. And this was not his fight. She’d drawn him into it when she’d called for him. No, even before, when she’d first reached out to a man whose need was greater than her own.
Many would say—he would say—that he owed her. But Shea hadn’t helped him expecting anything in return. She’d helped him because she couldn’t do anything else. And yet she needed him. He was the only person she would allow herself to trust.
She must have dozed because she awoke when he gently nudged her with his shoulder.
“We’re approaching Lincoln City. How much farther north is it?”
She sat up, wiping the fuzz from her eyes, and then studied the roadway in front of them.
“Not far. Just a few miles.”
“Okay, I don’t want to just drive in, especially since we have no way of knowing what we’re dealing with. Do you remember where the tunnel from the panic room comes out?”
Her chest tightened, constricting her airway. Her throat seemed to close off and she willed herself not to freak out.
Deep breaths, Shea. Don’t lose it now.
She sucked in another breath and tried to keep her response calm and focused so Nathan wouldn’t know she was about to come apart.
“Yes, I remember it. It should still be accessible, but who knows what’s been done to the house and the panic room? The house has solar panels and the security system is powered that way. My father was determined that something as simple as a power outage would never put us in danger or trap us.”
“If Grace was just there, then at least part of the house is still intact,” Nathan said quietly.
After giving him directions, she closed her eyes and tried to reach out to her sister