He drew in a breath and let it out with a huff. “To kill our kind—”
“Forget it.” She held up a hand and scooted away from him, turning her back to the door. “If you can’t freely trust me with your secrets, I don’t want them.”
“You’re asking me for information that puts me in an extremely vulnerable position.”
Again, she gaped at him. “Maybe you missed that I’m human. While you can go Sweeney Todd on yourself and bounce back in no time, I’m totally breakable. God, you don’t even realize how lucky you are. Everyone you know and love will always be here. You have no clue what real vulnerability is.”
“Anna, I’m so sorry you lost your mother. I feel your pain and it guts me. But I do know what vulnerability is. My life was peaceful and content eight weeks ago. Then the dreams started. Now my entire existence rests in your hands, and as much as I want to live, I’d die a thousand deaths to protect you from the slightest pain.”
His hand pressed to his chest, fingers splayed wide. “I feel emotions deeper than anyone should, emotions that aren’t mine, sometimes from hosts miles away.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Gracie has the gift of telepathy. But I have the curse of empathy. I’ve been an empath since birth. It started with Cain and then my parents. The older I got the more I felt. My life experience might not be equal to yours, but I assure you that I know the anguish of heartbreak, the grief of losing a child, the fear, and the joy of falling in love. But more than anything, I’ve felt the injustice of suffering. I not only swallow my pain, but the pain of everyone around me.”
His chest heaved as his face pinched with tightness. If that was true, she didn’t know how he managed to live around anyone at all.
“How can you stand that?” she asked, truly wondering how anyone could tolerate such a burden.
And Grace... Anna envied her perceptiveness, thinking it such a gift. But if she couldn’t shut it off, how could she concentrate on her own thoughts.
“I enjoy solitary activities and prefer to work alone. I’ve found ways to avoid overwhelming myself, but sometimes, like when I came to find you, it can get debilitating. I don’t think I’ll ever return to the city if I can avoid it.”
“Can you feel what I’m feeling now?”
He shut his eyes, his face angling toward the ceiling. “Sympathetic, anxious, tense, suspicious.” His head tipped to the side as he furrowed his brows. “And valued.” His eyes opened. “How was that?”
Spot on. She shrugged. “Anyone could have guessed—”
“But you know I wasn’t guessing. Otherwise I would have sensed your distrust.” He smiled. “Progress.”
“Don’t look so cocky. I haven’t agreed to help you.”
“But you’re listening now. Before you only heard words. Now, you’re grasping the bigger meaning.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” She’d always been a victim of getting sucked into the National Geographic shows, too. That didn’t mean she was going to run out and save the first antelope in trouble. “How long do I have to decide? You said I could go home in a few days.”
He looked away.
“Adam, you said I could leave.”
“And I meant it. I’ll not hold you here against your will. But I had hoped...” He looked at her, once again, eyes pleading. “I had hoped you’d decide to stay.”
“I have a life—”
“I’d give you a better one.”
She frowned. “I’m not Amish.”
“There would be an adjustment period.”
“Adam, I’ll never be Amish.”
“So long as you followed the rules and tried to fit in—”
“Which rules? Every woman here works in the home. I want a career. I want my clothes and music and hot water.”
“I can build you a water heater from a woodstove.”
“That’s not the same! What about driving, and Netflix, and my friends? I think all the other stuff is sort of cool, but there’s no way I could give up all my creature comforts.” Although, it was sort of nice not having to check her phone for notifications every hour.
He scooted closer and gathered her hands in his. “Anna, I know you had a plan, but this is the path you’re meant to follow. I was meant to find you. Our lives were designed to intertwine. I would break all the laws of the Ordnung if it meant convincing you to stay. You could practice medicine here.”
“You don’t get sick!” She let out a frustrated huff. “That’s not what I do anyway.”
He frowned. “But your schooling...”
“I’m a medical assistant—and not even that until I pass my finals, which I’m missing to be here. But I would do billing and administrative work. I’m far from becoming a doctor.”
“Billing? You take money from people who need medical attention? This gratifies you?”
“Well, no, but I like working in the medical field. It’s a good profession and maybe over time, once I started making more money, I could become a nurse practitioner or something better.”