Page 124 of Rejected Hollow

"I haven't been avoiding you."

"You've definitely been avoiding me."

He got to his feet and brushed the grass from his pants. When he looked at me again, some of the amusement had gone out of his expression.

"How's your shoulder?"

"Healing."

"And how's everything else?"

I opened my mouth to say I was fine, but the word wouldn't come.

Instead, I looked toward the trees.

"I don't know," I said. "Everyone keeps looking at me like I'm supposed to be something now, but I don't know what. I tried to do it again. The wolf. I couldn't."

Jax stayed quiet.

"It doesn't even feel like it belonged to me," I continued. "It feels like something that happened once, and now everyone expects me to explain it."

I gave a small, unsteady laugh.

"Oda told me to be careful who I show my hands to. Tamsin says everyone suddenly pretending to like me is full of shit. Ronan barely looks at me anymore. And I keep thinking that maybe it really was a fluke. Maybe the next time something happens, I'll just be me again, lying in the sand with a swan sitting on top of me."

Jax didn't answer immediately.

Then he stepped backward.

I frowned as he took another step, moving away from me and into the grass beyond the trees.

"What are you doing?"

He spread his arms.

"Run."

"What?"