I swallowed hard. I could live with failure. I'd done it my whole life. But not with being erased.
My voice roughened. “We'd wake up and all of it—every memory, every feeling—would be gone. We wouldn't remember what it was like to kiss for the first time, or to find the perfect gift, or to look ridiculous in front of strangers and know it made us stronger. Every good thing we built would vanish like it never mattered.”
She pressed a hand to her chest, tears slipping down her cheeks. “Please, listen. I was just trying to be careful. Give us time. I don’t want us to end.”
She looked at me like she was offering something—an olive branch instead of permanence. And that was the thing. She thought she was giving me hope, but all I could hear was maybe.
My throat worked around the words I wanted to say, but they came out jagged. “Let me play it out for you. I’m going to screw up. We’re going to fight. And when that happens, you’ll reach for that key and find the man you’ve spent your life searching for.”
“Don’t be cruel,” she whispered. “I wouldn’t do that.”
“I know.” I squeezed my eyes shut. “I know you wouldn’t. But it’s what scares me. You've spent your whole life chasing the one person who could be everything. You think I don't know that?” I broke off, shaking my head. “The agency never should've offered that damn key”.
The anger bled out of me, leaving only exhaustion. The kind that went bone-deep.
She reached for me, fingers brushing my sleeve. “I didn't mean to hurt you. I thought I—” She drew in a sharp breath. "Look. We can figure this out.”
I wanted to believe her. But then the fear crawled back in, whispering that I'd only be holding onto something borrowed.
“You say you need time to think. Maybe you’re right,” I said.
She shook her head hard. “No. I don’t want time, Grant. I don’t.”
“Maybe not,” I said. “But I do.”
The words felt wrong the second they left me. I almost took them back just to stop the look in her eyes.
The silence stretched between us, heavy as snowfall. She didn't move, and neither did I—almost as if once we broke the spell, it would be the beginning of the end. Every second widened the space between us.
I stood and reached for my bag, my movements automatic. The zipper’s rasp sounded too loud in the small room.
This felt like my cousin all over again, standing in a life that was never meant to be mine, pretending it could last if I just tried hard enough. But that delusion had finally caught up to me. Only this time, I wasn’t just a disappointment; I was losing a piece of myself.
She rose to her knees. “Please don’t go like this. It’s Christmas. Stay with me.”
I paused, my hand gripping the doorframe. My voice was barely steady. “I want to, Spells. More than anything. But I couldn’t take it if this was our last.”
Her lips trembled, the sound she made small and breaking.
I looked back once, just long enough to memorize her, sitting there in the dimming light, achingly beautiful even through tears that made me want to crawl back to her on my knees.
I was a fool. I should’ve taken whatever time she offered and prayed that if she ever used the key, I wouldn’t remember what it felt like to love her.
But I couldn’t be temporary again; the man filling in for someone else.
And so I left.
The door clicked softly behind me, and it felt like I'd created another ghost, one that would haunt me for the rest of my life.
Chapter 27
Valerie
The cold teriyaki beefslipped from my chopsticks and landed beside the limp broccoli.
I wrinkled my nose at the leftover takeout that equaled my lame attempt at breakfast. On the plus side, I’d never mastered chopsticks, and now I’d have plenty of time to practice—alone, during the holidays, in my chilly apartment where I didn’t cook because I sucked at it.
Yes, Valerie Spellman could solve a fifty-year haunting, but she couldn’t boil an egg. And apparently, she couldn’t hold on to the man she’d fallen for either. She’d also developed a disturbing new talent for thinking about herself in the third person.
