Why You Should Never Rescue Stray Demons Chapter 31

**OZ**

I want to kiss Kacia. Desperately. And I’m fairly sure she wants me to kiss her too. There’s a pull between us, like magnets dragging us together. My heart stutters. Her fingers tighten slightly on my sleeve, and for one electrified moment, we hover there. Balanced on the edge of something that could ruin or remake us. Then, our lips touch. Lightly. Barely. A whisper of contact, like the idea of a kiss more than the real thing. And just like that I’m struck with guilt. It hits like cold steel against my spine. I remember. I remember what brought me here. What I was sent to do. That I was summoned and bound to kill her. That I seriously considered it before I met her and that she doesn’t know. That I’ve let her walk beside me without telling her the truth. I remember that I’m still lying. Still keeping secrets. I know that there is a fae who wants her dead, something that she has been trying to avoid for her entire life. And I haven’t said a damn word because I don’t want her to look at me differently. I’m  not worthy of the way she’s looking at me right now. So I pull back. Slowly. Painfully. Her brow furrows. Her lips part slightly in confusion. I watch the moment slip away from her eyes, watch her soft expression harden, the openness in her close up as she tries to hide her hurt. She does a good job of hiding it, but I still see it. Just a flicker. A crack in her armor. But I see it, and I feel it like a punch to the gut.

“Put me down.” She says quietly. There’s no anger, just… Disappointment. That hurts more. I wish she would be angry with me, yell at me or something. I deserve it. Maybe I wouldn’t feel so bad if she were at least angry. My arms don’t want to let her go. Every part of me screams to stay where I am, to close the distance again and just take the moment. But I nod instead. Then I carefully, I lower her back to her feet, steadying her as gently as I can. She doesn’t look at me. And I, coward that I am, I don’t push the matter. We walk the rest of the way in silence. Heavy, awkward silence. Kacia still holds my arm, leaning on me heavily because she doesn’t have much choice. But it’s different. Before she was basically hugging my arm. Now she’s just leaning on it. The silence is agony with each footstep echoing with what almost happened. What didn’t happen. I hate it. I hate myself, a little more with every footfall. But this is the right thing, I tell myself. She deserves to know the truth before she chooses anything, especially me. I dug myself into this mess by not telling her the truth from the start. And the longer I wait, the harder it is going to be, the more angry she is going to be. So yeah, choosing not to kiss her right now is the right thing. I just wish the right thing didn’t feel so damn awful.

This drive home is agony. The silence is like wet cement, thick and clinging, filling my lungs with every breath. I’m so tempted to throw the car door open and fling myself into traffic. Not even dramatically. Just… Functionally. Logically. Efficient self punishment. I’d survive it, obviously. Probably. But if I DID get hit by a car… Well, I’d deserve that too. I glance sideways. Kacia is in the driver’s seat, her posture painfully stiff. She’s gripping the steering wheel like it’s the only thing anchoring her to reality, white knuckled and silent. It’s a real testament to how awkward she feels because I know for a fact that she is bone deep exhausted. She should be slumped over, eyes drooping, body sagging into the seat. She should be letting herself lean, just a little, on me, like earlier. I should be cracking bad jokes and queuing up something stupid on the radio just to help her stay awake. But instead, I’m sitting here, trying not to stare at her profile like a desperate idiot with a guilt complex. I shift uncomfortably in my seat. I can’t even throw myself out of the car to escape this self-inflicted awkward mess because Kacia is too damn kind. She’d stop. She’d pull over and insist on checking on me, no matter how tired she is. And that would make me feel worse. She deserves so much better than this. Than me. I need to fix this. I need to find some way, any way, to claw our way back to the sort of tentative, chaotic comfort we had before I nearly kissed her and then panicked like a damn coward. I know I can’t keep secrets from her forever. I know that’s not fair or right. But she’s EXHAUSTED. She just got paralysed by a basilisk, hell she nearly died, and now she’s barely upright. This is not the time to drop a confession that might unravel everything. Right? Damn, I hope I’m not just telling myself that because I’m a selfish bastard who’s too scared to own up to the truth. I glance at her again. She hasn’t looked my way once since the failed kiss. My usual defense mechanism, flirting, teasing, playing the charming menace to lighten the mood… Well that feels entirely out of place right now. I think if I tried, she’d either murder me with her eyes or actually stab me. Maybe both. Maybe I SHOULD try turning on the radio? Or maybe… Maybe I should just apologise. But what the hell does that look like? ‘Sorry I tried to kiss you and then bailed like a terrified teenager?’ Or, ‘I didn’t mean to lead you on, except for the part where I absolutely did, right up until I realised you might actually want me back? Oh, and by the way, I’m still keeping life-altering secrets from you, so... Yeah. My bad.’ Yeah… That’ll go down GREAT. I sigh and slump a little in my seat, pressing my forehead briefly to the cool glass of the window. Maybe I just need to shut up and survive this silence. Maybe I don’t deserve to break it. I just hope she doesn’t kick me off her couch when we get home. And if she does, I won’t blame her. Hell, I’d kick me off her couch. I have a whole new level of sympathy for Taryn and Vidar now. I was judging them earlier. I wanted to roll my eyes at how they dance around each other. But now? Now I get it. Maybe there ARE good reasons to hold back, even when someone likes you back. Maybe knowing you’re poison is enough to keep you from reaching for something sweet. I judged them too quickly. Because now, I’m the idiot biting my tongue, sitting in silence beside the one person I want most in the world, and feeling like I’ve already blown my one good chance.

“So… I’m thinking tomorrow morning I’ll go talk to Dave’s parents, learn more about him. His schedule and stuff…” Kacia says suddenly, her voice cutting through the thick, awful silence. It’s stiff and uncomfortable, like she’s forcing the words out just to fill the air, but I want to cheer anyway. She’s talking to me! She hasn’t locked me out completely. Maybe I didn’t break everything after all.

“That’s a good plan.” I say carefully, turning toward her. 

“Can I… Would you mind if I came along with you? To help out?” I ask. I’m trying not to sound too hopeful. Too desperate to stay close. She doesn’t answer right away. We pull up outside her place. She parks the car, kills the engine… And just sits there. Completely still. Her hands stay wrapped around the steering wheel, clearly she isn’t ready to move yet. I can feel the tension radiating off her. I want to reach over, want to touch her hand, her shoulder, anything to bridge. the gap I created between us. But I don’t. I can’t. Eventually, she lets out a long, exhausted sigh. The kind that sounds like it’s been sitting in her chest for hours. 

“You can do what you want, Oz. You always seem to anyway.” She says quietly. Her voice isn’t cold. It’s worse, it’s tired. Defeated. There’s frustration in it, sure, but mostly it’s disappointment. That quiet kind that cuts deeper than yelling ever could. If she only knew. If she knew that the one thing I wanted most in that moment was to kiss her. That I pulled away not because I didn’t feel anything, but because I care about her too much to let her get closer to a version of me built on secrets. But to her, it must’ve looked like rejection. Like indifference. Like I changed my mind. I want to explain. I want to tell her everything. But not tonight. She’s too tired. And I don’t want the truth to feel like one more weight added to her shoulders when she already looks like she’s carrying too much. So I sit there, silent. Trying not to drown in the distance I’ve put between us.