“I’d erase it from yours, too.”
“My parents thought they’d have more time, but they waited too damn long. If they’d just been honest with me from the start, I could’ve learned to control it. And Idamnsure wouldn’t have gotten involved with a human girl. Fuck, Gray. Carina was innocent, and I just…”
I held Gray close and clenched my jaw, willing the wave of memories to recede, but of course they wouldn’t.Carina…It was the first time in centuries I’d said her name out loud, and in doing so, I’d called forth her ghost.
Every single memory I’d ever shared with her came crashing back, from the first day we met at her father’s farm stand, to the last in that wheat field.
“You loved her,” Gray said softly.
At this, I pulled back and opened my eyes to meet her gaze. There was no jealousy there. Only empathy.
There was a time when that look in her eyes would’ve sent me into a rage. Whenno onegot behind my walls without a fight.
But who the fuck was I kidding? This woman had crashed through those barriers the very first night she sat across from me at her own kitchen table, slinging the cards that revealed my nature to her.
I looked into her eyes, losing myself in their twilight blue depths. “Yeah. I loved her, Gray. I loved her, and then I killed her.”
My throat tightened, barely keeping the tears at bay. The guilt.
“I never even got the chance to tell her I was sorry. To go to her funeral. To tell her father what had happened, man to man. My parents whisked me away in the middle of the night, forbidding me to talk about her. To this day, I’m sure her father thought she’d run away.” The tears gathered, then spilled. Hastily, I scrubbed a hand across my eyes. “That was the worst of it. The man hadn’t even known his daughter had died.”
Gray took my face in her hands. “It’s not your fault, Asher. You didn’t even know what you were.”
“Neither did she. So why am I the one still walking around? Still breathing and eating and drinking and fighting and fucking… Falling in love. I just…” I closed my eyes, reining it in. “She doesn’t get a do-over, Gray.”
“No, and that’s not fair. Really. But Ash, even if she’d never met you, right now? Tonight? She would’ve already been dead for centuries.”
“If you’ve got a point, Cupcake, I’d appreciate you getting to it.”
In a voice so soft it nearly broke me, she said, “Why are you still carrying her on your shoulders?”
I felt another tear slide down my cheek, hot and bitter, and willed myself to end this. To change conversations, get us back onto neutral territory. Back to fake Tarot readings and teasing and kissing.
But Gray wouldn’t let me. And in so many ways, I didn’t want her to.
I loved her. With my whole fucking heart. With my soul, however tarnished and tattered it was.
So this part of me, this deep dark well of regret and pain… I had to let her see it. The worst of me. The best of me. All of it.
“I can’t put her down,” I whispered. “Carrying her, remembering that moment, watching the life leave her eyes… That’s my punishment. My penance.”
“That’s just torture. You’re torturing yourself.”
“What else can I do?”
“Forgive yourself, for starters.”
I grabbed her hands, pulled them against my chest, pleading with my eyes for her to understand. Why was this so fucking hard?
“Ash, you have to—”
“I can’t, Gray. I just can’t.”
Gray shook her head, her own eyes reflecting my pain. My anguish. “I love you. That means you don’t get to carry this burden by yourself anymore. You say Carina doesn’t get a do-over, and you’re right. But youdo. Every day you wake up alive, it’s a do-over. You decide every minute, every second.Youchoose. So if you can tell me that you’re honestly not ready to put her down, or that you’re not quite sure how to forgive yourself, I will accept that, and I’ll do my best to help you through it any way I can.” She reached for my face again, her eyes blazing with new fire. “But you don’t get to say ‘can’t.’ Not anymore. Not about this.”
“Good advice, Doc. So how’s that grandma of yours? You ready to forgive her yet?”
It was a low blow, a desperate move to get off the topic of Carina, and I regretted it the instant the words fell out of my big, dumb mouth.
