Shift by Raine Thomas Read Free Book Online Page B

heard Tiege and Joshua when they’re training, haven’t you?”
    Despite himself, he smiled briefly. “I suppose you’re right.”
    When he just stood in front of the closed door staring at her, she tilted her head in question. Abruptly regaining control of himself, he took the steps necessary to get to the chair placed furthest from her. In his current mental state, he didn’t trust himself to get any closer.
    Her eyes moved from him to the seat closer to her. She issued a small sigh before catching his gaze and saying, “I’m sorry that you had to revisit what was obviously a painful memory today, Quincy. I’ve never for a moment stopped to consider how my grandfather’s death must have affected you.”
    He didn’t know what to say. He certainly hadn’t expected this when she knocked on his door.
    “It’s made me realize that I haven’t been a very good friend,” she continued. “We were so much closer when I was younger. When I assumed my fully mature form and we grew more…distant, it was easy for me to assume it was because of my appearance.”
    She no longer held his gaze, but looked at her hands folded in her lap. A pink blush colored her cheeks. He wondered with a great deal of embarrassment how long she had known that he found her the most beautiful being on either plane of existence and began to wish he hadn’t opened the door to her knock. His headache resumed as his stress level rose.
    “What I never considered,” she said softly, “was that it was my personality, and not my appearance, that you suddenly found so unappealing.”
    Quincy felt like he had just been body-slammed into a rock wall.
    “Today has made me realize how self-involved I’ve been,” she added as he struggled to catch up with her ridiculous and incorrect deductions. “If I hadn’t been so focused on adjusting to my adult form and accepting how different I am compared to the rest of my family, I might have had more perspective related to the change in our friendship.”
    She once again caught his gaze. “I’m sorry for judging you in such a harsh light, and for failing to uphold my half of our friendship. I should have made more of an effort to communicate with you when I sensed that things were changing between us. If I had, perhaps we could have gotten things back to the way they were. And I might better know how to offer you comfort at a time like this.”
    After wondering whether he had somehow managed to cross into yet another plane of existence, he blinked to clear his head.
    “Sophia.”
    “Yes?”
    “For someone so intelligent, you’ve never been so wrong.”
    She frowned. He could all but see her remarkable brain puzzling out his meaning. It suddenly occurred to him that his best friend had been willing to die for love, but he himself hadn’t been willing to face Sophia’s rejection or the possibility of casting out by her family because of his love for her.
    Well, there was no time like the present to change that.
    He stood up and moved closer to her. She also got to her feet, which he anticipated. Because she was so much smaller than most of those around her, she had never been comfortable having someone hovering over her. She took a step away from him when he advanced, inadvertently moving closer to his bedroom. He couldn’t deny that the room’s convenient proximity flashed through his mind.
    “I can’t really blame you for the conclusions you’ve drawn,” he said.
    His voice was lower than usual as he stepped closer to her. He watched her eyes go from narrow with concern to wide-eyed with confusion as she took another step away from him.
    “After all,” he continued with another step toward her, “you’ve been provided deliberately clouded concepts upon which you based your hypothesis.”
    Here, her pupils dilated. Her breathing quickened. She stopped retreating and instead gazed up at him with her lips slightly parted. Then he did something he never allowed himself to do: he focused on