WingSpan (Taken on the Wing Book 1) by Elizabeth Munro Page A

broadsided it. I hit them from behind.”
    His lungs empty with a rough hiss and he brings his head up, close to hers.
    “I tried to hold on to him,” her voice breaks, tearing at his heart. “I tried so hard.”
    He’d do anything to spare her.
    “Nuke was behind me.”
    Now he knows why the little human made her feel so terrible. Shit.
    “Don’t push it, Jenn,” he whispers. “I should have stuck around for you.”
    She shrugs like she did to the cabbie.
    “After you left I got ready for work,” she says, leaving out the tears he heard that morning. “I walked all the way to your hotel and banged on your door but you were gone.
    “I got in to work late. Delilah was covering my wicket and as soon as she saw me she hauled me down to the coffee room. I couldn’t sit up I got so dizzy I fell and they got an ambulance.”
    “Jesus,” Mark mutters.
    “Vertigo but they couldn’t find anything wrong. I got to talking to the nurse about Terry and all the bad things I did to try and cope—”
    “What bad things?” he’s glad to be sitting down.
    “Drinking, sleeping pills,” she explains. Mark wants to throw up. “I told her the hurt was still as bad as the day he died so they sent in a shrink. They put me on stress leave… post traumatic stress they call it. My insurance pays for a nice counselor. She comes to the apartment and we talk about Terry and she helps me pack.”
    ‘The’ apartment, he notes, not ‘my.’
    “Post traumatic stress,” Jenn sighs. “But I know what it really was.”
    “Yeah?” God, he’s trying to be cool for her but all he wants to do is go fuck something up.
    Like that would make it all better.
    “I tried so hard to hold on to the man I couldn’t have that I almost gave up the one right in front of me.”
    Mark watches, washed in her emotions. She seems peaceful then the pulse in her neck picks up and it’s like she explodes inside, then complete despondence…
    “You meant it,” she says, now filled with unshakable resolve. “What you said. You wanted to see me again.”
    “Yes,” he whispers. God yes, he thought about her as he drove away leaving her crying on the floor. Asshole. But he takes her hand, kissing her wrist around the bracelet as if to say the words neither one of them has spoken.
    “Shadow—”
    “Mark,” she interrupts. “I think for now Jenn and Mark. They talk and they feel and all Talon and Shadow are going to do is make it alright in bed when maybe it’s not the right thing to do now.”
    “I want you close,” he says as he helps her sit up. “My bed, no making it alright. I promise.”
    “That bus ride was three days with the stops,” Jenn rubs her leg. “It’s bad tonight. I’m not so sure I’ll get back to sleep.”
    “What do you need? I don’t keep anything around for pain but I’ll run out.”
    “My bag.”
    “I’ll get it.”
    First in his room he pulls back the blankets for her then grabs the bag and while she digs around he gets her some water.
    “I don’t like taking them,” she admits. “Oxycontin makes me feel really strange for a while.”
    “Were they what you had a problem with?” he kicks himself for asking but he still has the urge to take the bottle away and dump them down the toilet. “Shit, I didn’t mean for it to come out like that.”
    “Once, I think,” she won’t look at him. “I overdosed. I don’t remember what I took but there was a bunch of stuff missing when I woke up two days later. Careful with them ever since; try to stick with the over-the-counter meds now.”
    You’re being too hard on her. And on yourself.
    Of course he is. Survival rate is only half for gryphons who lose their sibling when they’re so young. She made it this far. He should be grateful and he is; proud of her too.
    “Where are your parents, Arlette ?” he asks.
    “Parents?” she laughs but she’s shaking and Mark knows he should have kept his mouth shut. “Terry and I grew up in foster care. All we had