One
Asher
It was always the same damn nightmare.
Her, turning to me with the sun in her eyes, grinning like we were the only ones in on the secret.
Me, chasing her through that golden field, hungry for her touch. Her kiss.
I always let her take the lead. It made the reunions that much sweeter.
I chased her for hours, neither of us running out of breath, until she finally stopped and turned to look at me once more. The wind blew her hair into her eyes and she laughed, pinning her dark waves back with her hands, taunting me until I finally caught up.
“Touch me,” she whispered then, and I obeyed, reaching for her face with the barest brush of my fingers.
The moment we connected, she was gone.
Incinerated by my deadly touch.
I dropped to my knees, a thousand screams trapped in my throat. The sun faded. The sky turned black. The field around us burned to ash.
The wind blew the dust of her bones into my mouth, and I woke up coughing, limbs tangled in my sheets, my body on fire with the fever I’d never quite shaken.
I sat up against the headboard and sucked in air, counting backward from a hundred until my heart stopped trying to bust a hole through my chest.
Son of a bitch.
Every time was like losing her all over again.Killingher all over again.
I kicked free of the sheets and stumbled out of bed, desperate to feel the solid wood floor beneath my feet. From one end of the room to the other I paced, trying like hell to loosen the nightmare’s grip.
The chill October breeze blew in through the open window, and the only thing I had on was a pair of gym shorts, but sweat trickled down my back anyway. My hair was damp with it, too.
The room felt like a damn sauna, and every one of my nerves buzzed with pent-up energy. My fingers twitched, already reaching for the cup of charcoal pencils on my drafting table.
Dropping into my chair in the pitch dark, I flipped open my sketchpad and grabbed a pencil. I didn’t bother turning on the light; I’d drawn her so many times I could do it with my eyes closed. Sometimes, she appeared whole and unbroken, as beautiful as she’d been on the day we’d met. Other times, she was as black as night, with glowing red eyes that burned right through me.
I never knew which version I’d see until I revealed her face on the page.
Thankfully, she was turning out whole and beautiful tonight.
Her memory was a drug to me now—painfully tearing me apart inside, yet impossible to resist—and I sank deep into the process. The ritual. Drawing her face night after night was as much my punishment as my salvation, and no matter how much it hurt, I wouldn’t let myself forget it.
Manically I brought the dream to life, shading in the hollows of her cheekbones, highlighting the soft sheen along her upper lip, trying to capture just how the light had danced in her eyes, the first time and the last.
Eventually, my nerves calmed. My heart rate slowed. The sweat evaporated from my skin, leaving goosebumps in its wake.
I had no idea how much time had passed, but my hand was stiff and cramped, and I’d worn the pencil down to a nub.
Tonight’s penance paid, I tossed the sketchbook back on the table and yanked open the blinds. Moonlight leaked in through the slats and landed on her face, and I stared into her eyes, once again begging for the forgiveness I didn’t deserve.
It was my version of jamming in the needle, and for those brief seconds, the ache in my chest dulled.
There was just one problem.
The woman staring back at me tonight wasn’t the brunette beauty that had haunted my dreams and filled the pages of my sketchbooks for centuries, but a curly-haired blonde with a soft, seductive mouth and eyes like the twilight sky.
The woman who’d seen into the deepest, blackest parts of my soul and decided I was worth saving anyway.
