And now I was standing here in the bathroom of a fucking warlord after I’d nearly lost her all over again, and it seemed all I could do was keep on saying the wrong shit, no matter how many chances I’d been given.
“Years,” I whispered, knowing I should shut the fuck up, stop the inevitable train wreck of a confession that would only hurt us both, but I couldn’t. “So many years when I couldn’t look into those green eyes. Yet not a single night has passed when I haven’t thought of you. Haven’t remembered those eyes, your smile, your laugh, the smell of your skin. Haven’t tried like a damn fool to hold onto something I never even deserved in the first place. And now you’re here and I’m here and I’m looking at you like this—looking at you after you nearly died tonight, and you’re still a million miles away, and I just…Fuck, sparrow.” I took her still-bruised face in my hands, my thumbs ghosting across her lips. “You’re so damn beautiful it’s a wonder someone like me is evenallowedto look at you. To want you the way I still do.”
She gasped, our gazes colliding with all the unspoken things—the heartache, the loss, the love, the friendship, the fuckups and regrets—myfuckups and regrets—and she parted those soft lips and drew closer and I lowered my mouth to hers and…
“Sparrow, I… I can’t. We can’t.” My whispers fell across her lips, my hands trembling with the urge to do it—just fucking do it—but I couldn’t.
Beneath the desperate touch of my palms, I felt her jaw clench, the air cooling between us, all the old aches marching right back into my heart and planting their fucking flag.
“I’m… sorry,” I said stupidly, turning away from her. “Sorry.”
Sorry. That fucking word again. Pretty soon there’d be nothing left to say to her— just that word on an endless loop, echoing for eternity.
But even then, it wouldn’t be enough. Not for all the pain I’d put her through.
“For what?” she asked, grabbing my shoulder and spinning me around to face her. Her eyes blazed with emerald-green fire. “You… you mess with my head. You say these things to me like… And then you just… God, Elian! You ask me whereIam? Where are you? Where the fuck areyou?”
“In a place I hope you never, ever see.”
“Why? Why don’t you want me to see it?”
“Because I…” I squeezed my eyes shut, wishing I could make this all go away. That I could rewind five minutes. Five weeks. Five fuckingyears.
But I couldn’t. All I could do was look her in the eyes once more and try to be honest.
“Because I can’t stand the thought of you ever getting to such a dark, hopeless place,” I said. “I know I keep screwing up, I know I’ve hurt you. But I only want good things for you. You have to believe that.”
“Excuse me, but no. I don’t have to believeshit.” She folded her arms across her chest, the hair towel dropping to the floor, wet locks cascading over her shoulders. “You confuse me so much, Elian. One second you’re about to kiss me. The next your pushing me away, or ignoring me, or acting like a jealous asshole.”
“I’m not acting. Iama jealous asshole. You haven’t figured that out yet?”
“But… butwhy?” She fisted her wet hair, her voice rising in frustration. “I told you how I feel. How Istillfeel. If you wanted to be with me, all you’d have to do is—”
“Ican’tbe with you.” I shook my head and turned away from her, leaning against the sink, steeling myself to put a little more force into my voice. “Itcan’thappen. What we had… it’s over, Haley. Forget my mixed signals and bullshit attempts at flirting. I’m an asshole, and I can’t deal with my own shit, let alone yours. You have to accept it and move on. I know it sucks, but it’s just the way it is. Period.”
“Accept it and move on? Like I’ve been trying to do for five fuckingyears?” She stood behind me, meeting my gaze in the mirror. “Trust me, Elian, I would love nothing more than to move on. But you know what? I can’t. It’s like… like I’m stuck in the past. I feel like Iliterallycan’t get over you, and you know why? Because I don’t even know what it is I’m supposed to get over! You never told me. One night I’m in your arms, singing for you—fucking singing for you—and then I wake up and your just… poof! Gone. No trace. No note. No goodbye. No closure. I told you I wished you dead, that I pretended it, but even that didn’t work. Because all it left me with was a dead man without a body to bury. You’re just…” She pressed her fingertips to her lips—lips I’d come so close to kissing tonight—and shook her head, tears spilling down her cheeks, each one carving a fresh path through my heart.
And in the silence that followed, the weight of her pain surrounded me, so heavy and sharp I could almost taste it.
“I know I said I wouldn’t ask,” she finally said, turning away from me to pick up the fallen towel. “Ikeepsaying it. Keep trying to convince myself it’s all in the past and I don’t need to know and I should just let it go, but… Tonight, when I landed in that moat, when I saw those bones rise up and I felt their hands on me, I almost didn’t see a way out. I truly thought I would die there. And all I could think about was how we never set things right. How I just wanted one more chance to talk to you. One more chance to ask—”
“There’s nothing to—”
“I can’tbreathe, Elian!” she shouted, turning back to meet my eyes in the mirror once more. “Every time you touch me, all I can think about is all the ways you’renottouching me. And your eyes? God. I used to get so lost in them. Remember? My whole life could be going to shit, and five minutes of staring into your eyes would set the whole world right again. But now, every time I look into your eyes, I remember what it felt like when you took that away from me too. My fuckinglifeline. And it’s like it just happened last night. Like it’s happening all over again right now, and I can’t…” She pressed her hand to her chest and took in a ragged breath. “I can’t let you go.”
Her voice broke, and she crumpled to her knees on the cold stone floor, and it was all I could do not to fall apart right along with her.
I was on my knees before her in a flash, clutching at the robe, tongue-tied and stupid and dying inside. Just fuckingdying. “I know, sparrow. I know.”
“Endit, Elian. Tell me your reasons for leaving and just… just end it for good, because I can’t survive this again. The wondering. The questions.You. I just can’t. So you look me in the eyes right now and tell me there was another woman, a man,someone. Tell me you never loved me. Tell me it was all a lie—that I was nothing more than a warm body in your bed to keep the nightmares at bay.”
Everything inside me burned and shriveled. I reached up and cupped her face again, uselessly swiping her tears with my thumbs, wishing I could cry them all for her. “Youknowit wasn’t a lie,” I said. “Fuck, Haley. You were theonlyreal thing in my life. Theonlyreal thing I ever—”
“No.” She wrapped her hands around my wrists, clenching me tight. “I don’t care. I don’t care what you tell yourself, Elian, I just need you to tellmeit was a lie. Convince me. I need a reason to hate you and walk away one last time. So fucking give it to me, asshole. You fucking give that to me if it’s the only thing you can get right for the rest of your damned immortal life.”
My eyes fell closed, as if that could ever block out the image of her wounded gaze, her broken heart, the endless pain my very presence caused her.
In a dark whisper, I said, “If I haven’t given you enough reasons to hate me by now, then nothing I can say tonight will change that.”
