Owls and Other Assassins: A Grumpy-Sunshine Contemporary Romance by Megan Moores

Author:Megan Moores [Moores, Megan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-04-02T00:00:00+00:00

33

JONAS

Feeling your feelings was overrated. The last eight years of numbness may have been painful and heavy, but the intensity and clarity of my feelings over the past few days was hard to bear.

I’d stormed off in a tantrum, though it was hard to have a real anger moment when you had to ask permission to use the boat and then paddle to shore. You can slam doors, squeal tires, and even break glass to let the world know how upset you are. Canoeing is not the right sport for performative rage.

Not that I was faking my anger. It was real and it was shaking through my whole body. I wasn’t angry at Gemma. I was mad at Anna for dying. Mad at myself for not saving her. I was enraged at the world in general. But even as I was lashing out at Gemma, grabbing my things, untying the boat, and heading to shore, I knew that anger wasn’t the emotion at the core of my outrage—anger was just a costume worn by fear.

My loss was still sharp, all these years later, but fear had overtaken the sadness. Fear that I might not be able to move on. Fear that I was using my grief as a suit of armor to ward off love, growth, and a new life. Fear that I was a total dumbass; that one was a solid fact.

After I left the cabin and pulled the boat up onto the rocky shore, I looked back, hoping to see Gemma on the cabin deck. But doing what? Waving a white handkerchief as she wept at my departure? Passed out from sadness and angst over my absence?

I didn’t see her at all. Was that any surprise? I’d been an asshole, once again.

I’d secured the boat on shore, gathered my bag, and followed the trail into the woods.

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