GhostWalkers 10 - Samurai Game

was in full-blown panic mode. She hadn’t had a panic attack in years. She’d had them all the time when her father had first found her, but samurai didn’t panic. Lungs didn’t burn for air and one didn’t claw and fight inside where no one else could see. She wanted Sam to just walk away from her and let her sort the entire thing out. She just needed space. Distance. Somewhere safe.
    You are safe with me.
    He stood in front of her, holding out his hand, palm up, his dark eyes locked on her face. She studied his face, so still he could have been carved of stone, but for his eyes. So alive. So tender. This man stood before her, offering her everything, offering her paradise, and she’d thrown it back in his face because she was still that white-haired child a brutal, inhuman monster had declared useless. She’d allowed her own fears to overcome what she knew of him. He was a man of honor, and yet she dishonored him by not believing he could handle the things she needed to tell him. In truth, it was Thorn who couldn’t handle them.
    “Not Whitney, Azami,” Sam disagreed, obviously still reading her thoughts. “You are considering rejecting me, not because of Whitney, but because you mistook what your father said to you because you believed in a monster and that was the only way you could make sense of everything.”
    Her gaze dropped to the object in Sam’s open palm. Her heart jumped. She’d recognize her father’s work anywhere. He was as famous for his intricate jewelry as he was for his swords. She didn’t touch that very small ring, but actually stepped back to look up at Sam.
    It took a moment to find her voice. “Where did you get that?”
    “Your brother gave it to me. He said your father made itfor the man who would bring you happiness. He knew the right man would come along and fall like a ton of bricks for you. You’re so easy to want, Azami, so easy to love, but you still reject who and what you are. You are Thorn, that incredibly brave girl who has grown into a remarkable woman. Look at the ring and tell me your father didn’t see the true Azami for everything she is and everything she stands for. He loved Azami
because
she’s Thorn.”
    She didn’t want to look at the ring. She wanted to look at his face. This man who believed in her when she’d momentarily lost herself. This was a man who would always find that small child huddled in a corner and he’d lift her up, shelter and protect her.
    “How blind could I be? How reckless?” she murmured in wonder.
    “Your father knows how brave that child is, he always knew. He took you home because he knew your worth. He saw it even as you lay in that street. He put his life on the line to take you from those men. That’s Thorn, Azami. That courage of spirit. That will to survive. Whitney couldn’t break you as a child. Don’t let him do it to the woman.”
    Still, she didn’t take the ring. Instead, she looked at the man holding her father’s gift out to her. Sam was really the gift. The sun would always rise in his eyes. He would always be the man who saw her. Almost from the first moment he laid eyes on her, he had looked past her physical body and really embraced her—who she was as a person. She hadn’t done the same to him. Had she looked carefully into his mind, she would have seen unconditional acceptance, but she’d been so certain he wouldn’t want Thorn. Little Thorn with her misshapen body, carved up by a butcher, with her freakish white hair, useless and thrown away like garbage.
    Sam had given himself fully to her, everything he was, right from the moment their minds connected. He didn’t try to hide the loyalty he had to his team, or the struggle he feltknowing he had to tell them about her, but he’d stayed true to his character. He let her see who he was while she tried to hide herself from him.
    “I’m sorry, Sam. I really am. I don’t know why I can’t seem to let go of Whitney’s evaluation of me.”
    “Because every child wants their father’s approval, and for all intents and purposes, Whitney was your parent,” Sam said.
    She
hated
that he spoke the truth. She’d had no one else but Whitney for so long. “He kept me away from the other girls for the most part. There was one girl he called Winter. She was able to stop a heart from beating just with a touch. He made her practice on me, and she would cry and tell me she was sorry. She tried to protect me, but he’d punish her, terrible