Читать книгу Blood from Stone - Laura Anne Gilman - Страница 8

“Why do you think you need it?”

“I…” He wants to say that he doesn’t know, but that’s already been established as a cop-out. He may not know, but there is a reason. There is always a reason. So he says what he already knows. “It feels good. The pain. But it’s not about masochism. It’s about trust.” That was true. It felt true. “The pain means that something bad is happening, but I trust that nothing will go wrong.”

“But things do. You’re damaging yourself. Every time you do it, you’re hurting yourself.”

“I didn’t…I don’t care. I still need it.” A pause, because he has always been honest in his own way. “I don’t need it. I want it. I want it enough to risk everything. And it will cost me everything. That’s why I’m here.”

“It” was current, magical energy. Talent could use it, manipulate it. To a Null like himself, it was deadly, screwing with the internal organs. Being caught in a current backlash was like being repeatedly hit with lightning bolts. Nobody in their right mind would find it a turn-on.

It wouldn’t be the first time he’d wondered if he was crazy.

“What do you what to accomplish here? Do you want to not want it?”

That was the damned thing about therapists. They ask the kinds of questions you don’t want to think about, much less answer. He shifts in the chair, his legs suddenly too long for comfort, his hands too large, his skin too tight around his frame.

“What do you want?” The voice probes again, soothing but insistent.

“I don’t know. That’s the problem.”

“Indeed.”

“I hate it when you say that. I hate everything about this.”

“Then why are you here?”

Sergei shifts again, wishing desperately for his cigarette case. He hasn’t had a cigarette in years, but right now, the feel of the thin cylinder in his fingers would be just as soothing as the hit of nicotine ever was. Because he doesn’t know why he is here, doesn’t know what he is supposed to do or say, or bring out of it.

“I don’t know.”

Except he does know. Wren. Always, ever, Wren Valere. Partner, lover, best friend…the source of his addiction, and the thing he would lose, if he couldn’t get it under control.

He just doesn’t know how to do that, without walking away from her, too.