Anger flared inside, but I tamped it down.
In so many ways, I understood him. That urge. That sliding scale between desperately wanting to live, desperately wanting to die, and the dead center of not really caring one way or the other.
When I’d met Elian, we were both closer to the center. But now, it felt like he was sliding toward that black edge where he might just decide—one night when no one was watching—to hurry things along.
Elian didn’t know just how close he’d driven me to that very same, very dark edge—and he didn’t need to.
But I wasn’t about to let him fall over it now.
“Do you want to die?” I asked.
He offered a lazy, crooked grin. “Do you want me to die?”
“Why do you do it?”
“All part of the fantasy, sparrow. You should try it—might help take the edge off if you escaped your reality once in a while. Might make you a little less uptight.”
“You think I don’t know how to escape reality?” A bitter laugh hissed through my lips. “It’s ironic that you ended up in the fantasy-dealing business, Elian. That people actuallypayyou for this shit. Me? I never needed a pill or fae illusions or the thrall of a vampire. I spent so much time making up fantasies aboutyou, half the time I couldn’t even remember what was real.”
“Yeah?” Guilt flickered in his eyes. His smile faded. He stepped closer. “What kind of fantasies?”
“All different kinds. Sometimes the one where I woke up and found you in bed, just like always, and realized my life without you was only a bad dream. Other times it was the fantasy where you came home to me, telling me you’d finally remembered our life together after being in a coma for five years. There was the one where I’d be in a restaurant with some other guy, and you’d walk through the door and see me there, and you’d fall to your knees and beg me to forgive you and take you back.” Emotion rose in my chest as all those old, useless dreams came rushing back. “Then there was the most painful one. The one I distracted myself with for hours on end, forgetting to eat, to shower, to sleep.”
Elian swallowed hard. Reached up and tucked a lock of hair behind my ear, his glassy-eyed gaze turning soft. Sad. “Which fantasy was that, sparrow?”
“The one where you’d never even left me at all.”
A tear slid down my cheek, and Elian followed it with his fingertip, lingering on the corner of my mouth.
“Three-thirty-three in the morning,” I whispered. “It’s the loneliest time in the world, Elian. When the rest of the city is asleep and you’re wandering your own house like a fucking ghost. Do you have any idea how many three-thirty-threes I suffered through? Staring out the window onto the dark streets of Blackmoon Bay, trying to walk backward through time in search of theonething I could’ve done differently, theonething I could’ve said to make you stay?”
He cupped my face with both hands, his breath warm on my lips, sickly sweet from the drugs.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I never meant… I’m so sorry.”
“Those were my fantasies,” I said. “They gave me hope. And let me tell you something. Hope? It’s a drug worse than your Devil’s Dream. A drug that causes delusions so powerful, you re-route your whole life around them until all you have left are the bullshit stories you tell yourself just to get through another day.” I closed my eyes and leaned into his touch, stealing a little of its warmth. “Those fantasies were killing me. So, I came up with a new one.”
“Tell me,” he whispered.
I opened my eyes. The guilt etched into his face was nearly overpowering.
I didn’t want to carry it for him. Not a single ounce.
“The one where youdied,” I said. “Every other fantasy got locked in a box, because they were too painful to deal with. And now I’m standing here watching you pop your little pills and you’re looking at me like that and we both knowdamnwell I’m still in love with you—I always will be. But all I can think is… All I can think is that I wish it were true. I wish you reallyhaddied. Because grieving for a corpse is a hell of a lot easier than grieving for a man who’s standing right in front of you, disappearing a little more each night.” More tears fell, and I swiped at them hard. “So that’s all I’ve got left for you, Elian. All the blood. All the broken pieces. The fucking mess. Take a good look, because this is thelasttime I’m shedding a tear for you.”
He stared at me in silence, but didn’t take too long to recover. He moved in close once again, pushing me against the counter, sucking all the air out of the room.
“You wished me dead, sparrow?” he breathed, looming over me. “Well guess what? Iwasdead. I died the night I walked out on you.” He fisted my hair, his hips pinning me in place, the heat of his body radiating through his clothes and straight into my skin. “You want me on my knees? You want me to bleed for you? Fine. Here it is. I was a dead man. A fucking ghost. Then out of nowhere, you walked into my bar with your vampire stakes and your green eyes and that hot little lace dress, and for the first time in five fucking years, my heart started beating again. Damn near thought I was having a heart attack. You tell me you still love me? Fuck, Haley. I’d giveyouthe last fucking breath from my lungs if it came down to it. But I can’t. No matter how badly I want to, I just can’t. So you go on pretending I’m dead if it helps you get through the night, but don’t for asecondthink you’re the only one staring out that window at three-thirty-three, wondering what the fuck you could’ve done to change things.”
He didn’t let me go. Didn’t back up. Just kept standing there with his hands in my hair and his body so close I could feel his heart banging against his chest, could see my own reflection in the depths of those bottomless black pupils.
His gaze swept down to my lips, and he lowered his mouth to mine, the barest brush of a kiss…
A noise on the stairwell, and a second later, the kitchen door swung open.
Jax.
Elian closed his eyes. Slipped away from me.
