Blue Moon (Colors of the Moon #1)

Chapter 15

"Trust you?"

I gaped at Jared, who was standing in the middle of my room. The door was still wide open, but for once I didn't care who heard us. Not even the little voice in the back of my mind was able to hold me back.

"I don't know you. Ever since you brought me here you have either been avoiding me or storming away from me. So, of course, I don't trust you."

Judging by his previous reactions, I expected him to either lash out at me or storm away. Yet all he did was continue to stand nailed to his spot, with his eyes slowly melting from the pitch black into his ordinary dashing blue.

I, on the other hand, found myself unable to stop.

"Have you even tried to find my family like you promised? You said you would do everything in your power to locate them. So, have you?"

"I have."

I expected him to finally reveal that he either intentionally or not forgot about my family. Therefore, his answer caught me completely off guard.

"What?"

"I've been looking for them ever since we came back." He ran his hands through his hair and tugged on the ends. "But it's as if they have dropped from the surface of this planet. There isn't a single clue to where they might have disappeared off to."

"You've been looking for them?" I still wasn't able to wrap my head around the fact. "Is this why you've been avoiding me?"

"I haven't been—"

One raised eyebrow from me had his denial dying in his throat.

"Fine, I've been avoiding you. But it's not because of your family."

"Then why?"

"It doesn't matter." He shook his head and turned away from me.

In two wide strides he diminished the distance toward the still open door. I fully expected him to once again walk out on me. Instead, he closed the door with a soft click, while he remained inside the room.

Despite knowing he could probably break a locked door in half, my throat began to close up the moment he moved his hand off the door handle. The walls on my left and right began to close in, so I quickly forced myself to start counting. One, two, three...

"Please, don't." I barely managed to squeeze the words through my non-existent airway. Four, five, six... "The door..."

One look at my trembling hands, and he immediately pulled the door wide open. The moment the daylight from the hallway shone through the doorway my muscles loosened. My breaths turned deeper and fuller, while my shaking stopped.

"Tha... Thank you."

I could feel his eyes scanning up and down my body, but I couldn't force myself to meet his gaze. Instead, I clasped my hands behind my back and fished through my brain for any topic to fill the nerve-racking silence.

"Why have you been avoiding me?"

I waited for three heartbeats, but nothing other than silence follow. Just when I settled for switching onto another topic, he shifted his weight from one foot onto the other and then straightened his back.

"Because you're a human."

"What?" I glanced up at him, only to find him still looking right at me.

This made me immediately lower my eyes, but not before I caught the hesitant glint in his eyes.

"I don't know how to act around you."

"Because I'm a human?"

"Yes. If you were a werewolf, we would have already been mated and marked right now." He once again tugged on his hair. "But because you're a human, I don't know what to do."