Bo and the Beast (Book #1) (Completed)

21. What Is It Like To Love?

A day later, Bo cautiously exited the mansion after a brief cleaning of the kitchen with Fil, and made her way toward the back garden with a book tucked under her arm. She half expected the robots to come swarming at her again, setting off the blaring alarm, but nothing happened. Her boots crunched on the gravel and her breath felt loud in her ears. The hair on her arms rose, as she had chosen a sleeveless silk shirt from her closet that morning, and she hurried toward a stone bench sitting alongside a hedge.

The stone felt cold even through her pants. She tucked her feet under, and pulled the book to her nose, starting on the last place she'd left off the night before. It was one of the rare novels, this one a romance about a medieval knight and his lady love. It was part of a series, and Bo had snagged the first volume after she'd struck her new deal with the Beast. At one time, this book might have been just another story of many, but now it was a rare and precious breed. Bo devoured the pages so fast that they were in constant danger of tearing.

A few minutes into her reading, the sky began to darken and grow cloudy. Bo glanced up at the dark underbellies. Rain was coming. As with any time the sky looked about ready to offer some water, Bo's stomach fluttered. The camp was always in need of fresh water, not to mention what their little plots of crops needed as well. She imagined everyone at home smiling from ear to ear as they dragged out the large barrels from storage to collect the rainwater. She envied them the pure and smooth water, but she knew the kind she had here was just as good. Her memory painted the rain as something magical, imbued by its scarcity, and the Beast's water could never match that.

She returned to her book, determined to stick out her place on the bench until the storm started. A slight breeze ruffled the pages and her hair. It wasn't until she reached the end of a chapter that she took a moment to stretch and crack her neck. As she did so, her eyes skimmed across a shape at the far end of the garden, near the house. She knew immediately who it was, and she studiously kept her eyes off him. If he wanted to lurk, fine. But she wasn't going to encourage him by giving him even an ounce of attention. Raising her eyebrows, she returned to the story, but after reading the same sentence around five times, she realized she couldn't concentrate with him staring at her.

She looked up sharply, her lips pressed together. "So are you just going to perv on me from a distance all day?" she asked.

He approached and stopped a few feet in front of her, continuing his staring. She rolled her eyes and ran her hands over her hair. "Really? You're just going to stare and not say anything?"

He blinked and shifted his eyes. He made a move to sit down next to her on the bench, and she shifted to accommodate him before she realized she should have held her ground. Neither of them said anything, either through stubbornness or just a lack of a common interest. Bo waited a few moments more before returning to her book, not really caring if it was rude.

"Tell me about your family."

She looked up with a scoff. "That's a bit random."

"Tell me about them," he repeated.

She shook her head. "No, I don't want to." Why should she tell the creature that took her from her family about what they were like? Why did he deserve an answer, when he'd torn them apart and left her alone in his cold and empty mansion.

And yet... when she glanced at his face when she answered, she saw something deep in his eyes. It wasn't really an emotion, or anything Bo could put into words, but it felt a bit like looking at the gray sky above her. A shiver ran down her arms, and she looked away sharply.

"I have a father and an older sister, and a friend that's as close as a brother," she blurted out. "We all live in a camp for anyone who was misplaced during the war. We try to stay as stationary as we can, but sometimes we have to move around to find a water source when the one we use dries up or bandits claim the territory."

She found herself going over all the things in her daily life that she'd taken for granted. The way Felicia always whined, Aston's constant boundary pushing when it came to her authority, her dad's laugh. She spilled it all, lost in the memories that surfaced, keeping her tears only barely in check. She then came to the family member she didn't discuss with anyone. Her lips parted, and she heard herself telling this creature the darkest memory she had.

"My mom is dead. Aliens killed her." She wanted to shove the words back into her mouth as soon as they were free. Her hands balled in her lap, curling around the edges of the book.

The Beast didn't comment on the part his species played in Bo's tragedy. His eyes locked onto a bush a few hundred feet away from them. Shoulders back, jaw set, he almost looked human. His blue skin gave him away, but if it was the color of clay, or sand, or bark Bo would've been tempted to imagine him as someone she could reason with. Perhaps if he had been just a bandit she might have gotten through to him by inviting him to the camp with her. They could use his strength out there in the harshness of the Blast Zone.

But he wasn't human. He wasn't even a fraction of a human.

The Beast pulled her from her thoughts with his deep voice. "Tell me. What is it like to love?"

Bo raised an eyebrow. "That's an odd question."

"I'm odd."

What was it like to love? Bo was at a complete loss at how to answer that. She'd never thought much of loving her family. It was just something she did, as natural and disinteresting as the way she breathed. She tried to pick it apart, to see what it meant.

"I suppose," she said, slowly, "it's worrying about someone more than you do yourself. It's wanting them safe and well-fed and not in pain. It's hoping they'll outlive you. It's absolutely terrifying."

The Beast nodded his head as if digesting her words.

The silence grew awkward, and Bo shifted in her seat. "Do you have a family?" she asked. It was more out of politeness than any sort of curiosity, but as she asked it she realized that she really did find it somehow strangely interesting.

"I was not allowed to stay with the woman who birthed me. The Psin—" He stopped short and glanced at her before continuing. "My species does not support 'family'. The closest we have is our battalion, but even then we are only taught to fight to be the strongest in the group. So, I do not know what you talk of when you say that you love your family. I have no one that I care for more than my own life."

Bo stared at him, anger suddenly flaring out of nowhere in her chest. This mention about the life of the aliens on their home planet felt like a bomb going off inside her. It didn't shock her that the children were taken from their parents and raised to fight, because she'd seen the signs of ruthlessness in them too often to ever think that they had loving families at home. They were true killing machines, ones that had shown her first hand that they didn't care a single heartbeat about such things as mothers.

"Yes, believe me, I'm painfully aware that you don't care about anyone but yourself," she said.

The Beast stared at her, something mournful in his face. The silence grew too tense and Bo slid her book into one hand. "I'm going in," she said, getting to her feet to try and get far away from the memories of the past.