Free True: An Elixir Novel by Hilary Duff Page B

faces. Would paint have been better?”
    Sage shakes his head. The muscles in his jaw clench and unclench, and he won’t meet my eyes. Panic swirls inside me.
    “Sage, talk to me! What is it?”
    I get up and sit next to him, but he shifts away so I can’t touch him.
    “This is who I am, Clea,” he says through clenched teeth. “This face. This body. I thought you understood. I thought you were okay with that.”
    “I do. I am. I know who you are, Sage. I just—”
    Again I reach for him, but he leans back on hishands and turns away to stare out the window. His eyes look tortured.
    “I’m sorry, Sage. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean . . .”
    “You look at me, but you don’t see me at all.”
    “That’s not true.”
    “I’m like a substitute for a man who doesn’t exist anymore. Even if we get a lifetime together, you’ll always feel like there’s something missing. Always.”
    “No! Sage, you’re wrong.” I rush to stash the art supplies in the backpack, desperate to turn back the clock and undo my mistake. “This was a stupid idea. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
    “I do,” Sage says.
    He stalks out of the room. His legs are so long I need to trot to keep up with him. “What are you doing? Sage, talk to me!”
    I reach out and grab his wrist, but he gives his arm a fierce twist to shake me off. I chase him through the house to the foyer, where he grabs my car keys from their hook.
    “No! Sage, you can’t leave!”
    I lunge and grab him tightly now, pulling back on his arm. “You can’t go out there! What if someone sees? What if—”
    “Let me go !” He pushes the middle of my chestwith his free arm, so hard that I sprawl backward, completely out of control, and slam into the wall. There’s a low shelf mounted there and my head slams hard, biting into its edge. I crumple to the floor, but I’m glad because Sage has never been this violent, and the sight of what he just did will shock him out of this. . . .
    But he doesn’t even look at me, just stalks outside.
    Thank God I was too excited about the art supplies to reset the alarm, I think. That would bring Wanda running. Maybe Rayna too.
    I hear my car start up and squeal away.
    Let him at least drive far, so no one Nico knows sees him, I think, then feel immediately guilty, because who knows what kind of trouble Sage could get into driving around in a rage? Forget that. . . . Just let him be safe.
    I reach to the back of my head, and my fingers come back slicked with blood.
    Shit.
    I get to my feet slowly, and when I know I’m not light-headed, I stagger to the closet and grab a clean washcloth, which I fill with ice and press onto my cut. I stare at myself in the hall mirror and check my pupils to make sure they’re dilatingnormally. Everything seems fine—no concussion—so I lie down on the couch, the iced cloth keeping pressure on my head.
    I should have known. How did I feel when I thought Sage looked at me and saw one of my other lives? I hated it. I felt rejected, like I was nothing but a fallback—the closest thing he could get to the woman he loved, but not her. And I felt that way even without Sage doing anything as stupid and callous as asking me to draw a picture of myself the way I was before.
    I am a horrible human being.
    I wince at my own thoughts. I sound like a battered girlfriend, making excuses and blaming myself.
    This is different, though. Yes, a battered girlfriend would say that, too, but this really is. Sage would never hurt me if he was in his right mind. And okay, maybe that’s an excuse, but it’s not like he hurts me all the time. It happened once. Who says it’ll ever happen again? And if it does . . . it’s not like I’d make excuses for him forever.
    Would I?
    I can’t think about it. It’s such a mind knot. I’m not that girl who puts up with whatever her boyfrienddishes out because she knows he loves her. I would never be that girl.
    But I’d also never turn away from