Brave (Healer) Read Free Page A

to go with Oliver and keep yourself safe.’
                  I let my eyes fall on Oliver again. He is appraising the room for anything else I might need. His hands are on his hips and his jaw is flexing. ‘I can trust him?’
                  I see Oliver look up as his name is dropped into the conversation and he looks perplexed, perhaps even a little hurt about my apprehension. He hasn’t done anything to warrant my mistrust but he doesn’t realise what I’ve been through. Forgive me if I can’t willingly put my safety in a stranger’s hands.
                  ‘Yes!’ Rose says exasperatedly as if the fact that I’m doubting her insults her. ‘Oliver is one of the nicest people I know. As soon as I realised I needed to get you out of Ayrin, he was the first person I thought of. You will love him.’
                  I guess it is rude to be weary of her intentions when she has spent every day of the last six months trying to keep me safe. She and Arrow barely slept trying to find a solution to our problem, trying to think of a way to kill Maurice for good. My blood should be out of his system by now so he is somewhat weaker but that isn’t very reassuring. He’s still pretty indestructible. ‘I’m not wasting anymore time on the phone, Cassie. Hurry up.’
                  ‘Rose?’
                  ‘Yes?’
                  ‘I miss you,’ I say softly.
                  This moment seems too intimate while this stranger is sitting in my cramped bedroom. I haven’t heard Rose’s voice in an age and I haven’t seen her face in even longer. The texts and emails are always brief. There’s never any time to tell her about my life. I long to sit with her and tell her about my new friends, Jonathan and baby Lily while she brushes my hair like she used to. While I’ve enjoyed spending time with normal people my own age, I can’t tell them about the vampire pursuing my death or how my dad cries himself to sleep sickened with worry that I might be kidnapped again. I can’t chat to Lucy and Kate about how I fell in love with a boy who tried to kill me then kidnapped me and, oh yeah, now he has lost his memory and doesn’t even know who I am. They could never understand how my heart is broken in a thousand places and the shards stick into my lungs making it difficult to breathe. They will never understand me completely but Rose does.
                  ‘I miss you too, Cassie, so much,’ Rose replies then she hangs up.
                  Oliver is kneeling on the floor and looks up at me from beneath his bushy eyebrows, ‘You okay?’
                  I nod and swallow but there are a few tears prickling my eyes. I don’t cry much anymore. When I first came home from Maurice’s house, I sobbed from morning until night but after a while I learned to turn it off. They were loud, crackling, heartbroken sobs. Now the grief I feel over losing Gabe lies stale in my heart, it isn’t a fresh wound anymore but hearing Rose’s voice was a painful reminder of how the scar became.
                  ‘Okay, well let’s go,’ he says.
                  ‘No,’ I retort. ‘I can’t leave again.’
                  Although he is brawny and towers over me, his face is as sweet as a small child’s. He gives me a soft, sympathetic smile and says, ‘Look, I know you’ve been through a lot, Rose has told me what happened, and you’re scared, trust me I get that, but you gotta trust me. You need to come with me, Cassie.’
                  ‘ I’ve been through a lot? What about my family? I can’t do this to my dad again. I promised him that I wouldn’t,’ I say, trying to stifle the tears again. As the words leave my mouth I am aware of how true they are. There is no way I could willingly break my father’s heart again, not after seeing him