The Sage's Vow

6.1 || A Little Secret

EIGHT MONTHS. IT had been eight months since he'd last had any contact with or seen anyone from his old life. He had vanished, leaving behind a burnt house and no signs of where he'd gone. The Paladins must have handled everything, but Josh hadn't had internet or cell phone service on the Sanctuary to contact his friends. Even if he had, what would he have said?

Over time, he had buried the guilt over what he had done to his friends. Now, seeing Hannah a mere dozen feet away from him, it festered beneath his skin like his insides had turned into boils.

The guilt wasn't what caused the buzz in his ears, though. Panic danced through his heart. Hannah was seeing him. Even if he'd done a horrible thing, he'd vanished because what else was he supposed to do? He lived a life she couldn't know anything about, and now here she was, staring at him, and he needed to do something.

He reached inward, hoping to get a suggestion from Boomer. The bond was quiet. Of course it was. Boomer had mentioned he was going to rest earlier. Josh could wake him up, but should he? No. Surely he could handle this.

His hand lifted. His lips quirked in what was supposed to be an easy smile but likely looked more like a grimace. Her eyes, which had been flicking between all three of them, rested on him at his movement.

"Hey, Hannah," he said. "Long time no see."

That was the wrong thing to say. Her cheeks flushed red. Not sparing Eli or Mateo another glance, she stomped past them toward Josh. He inched back before he could catch himself. Orcs? Imps? Those he could handle. A furious Hannah? That was too much.

"Don't you just 'hey, Hannah' me, Joshua. First, you all but ghost me after Darren goes crazy at school. Then, I hear your house has burned down and that you can't contact me because you're off in the middle of nowhere for who knows what reason. And now you're here, in town, where you very well know where I live, if not at least where all the blasted payphones are!"

At the end of each of her sentences, she jabbed a finger into Josh's shoulder. Her expression twisted into a scowl, but there wasn't only anger in her eyes. They filled with water, a single drop escaping when she blinked rapidly.

"You're lucky that..." She bit her lip, shook her head at herself, and then socked Josh in the chest.

Josh wished the impact would hurt. The tear sliding down Hannah's cheek told him he deserved to feel the pain she'd been trying to inflict. No amount of sorries would make him less of a jerk for how much he had abandoned everything—everyone—from his normal life.

A small, rational voice in the back of his head pointed out that he hadn't really had a choice. He and his family had lunged through a portal to escape the very destruction that ruined his old house.

The louder voice screamed that he somehow should have done more.

"I'm sorry, Hannah. I—" He what? Had vanished to become a warrior soul-bound to a dragon to fight evil? Not only did that sound crazy, but he couldn't just give away that little detail about his life.

Hannah glowered. "What? Not even going to bother to explain?"

The store may as well have collapsed on Josh with how heavy his chest felt, because he couldn't explain. He couldn't. To the rest of the world, what he experienced every day was fiction, fantasy, something they'd see in a book or a movie.

It was a world he was meant to protect her from. Yet here she was, tears in her eyes, hurt splayed clearly across her face. This wasn't how it was supposed to be. How was he to protect her when doing so also hurt her?