“I didn’t mean to overstep—”
“You didn’t,” I said. “And you haven’t.”
“I… haven’t?” Those eyes, timid, lifted to find mine again. “At all?”
Now she had me looking down, staring into my whiskey yet again as the sensation of that kiss returned to haunt my entire being. “No.”
Silence overtook the table—uncomfortable but simultaneously loaded with heat and pressure, the consuming kind of burn that comes right before the wood in a bonfire breaks and embers go spilling.
“Grim,” she said, severing the silence that otherwise might have devoured us both. “Don’t you think it’s odd that, well, nothing’s happened yet? In… the last few days, I mean. Because if I’m a Fated Soul and already overdue for the White Basin… shouldn’t that hurry things along?”
“Not necessarily,” I said.
“Oh?” she probed.
“I don’t know,” I amended, grabbing the whiskey glass, my hand tight on the tumbler. “This has never happened before, so in this instance, it can’t be said I know what I’m talking about. So, maybe it is odd. I guess I just don’t like it, and I want to pretend the delay is perpetual.”
“Don’t like what?” she pressed.
I threw back the rest of the whiskey before setting the glass down too hard. “I don’t want to do it.”
Those lids fluttered again. Confusion flittered across her features while she tried to interpret my blunt but still-obtuse response.
“You should get to stay,” I clarified. “Here, I mean. You’re doing stuff. Good stuff. You smile and shit—that’s getting rarer than you think. I guess that’s why I saved you on that balcony. You didn’t even know what I looked like, and you were hitting on me. Who does that?”
“My offer would have stood even if Ihadknown what you looked like,” she said tentatively, and why did I believe her? Maybe because she’d kissed my teeth, embraced my bones, run straight into my fleshless arms instead of away…
“I should talk to White,” I said, eyes shooting askance because sometimes it hurt to look at her knowing she was going to die. The pain got worse with the knowledge I’d be there to see it. How was I supposed to just let it happen? I hadn’t that night on the balcony when I’d known her for less than ten minutes. Now I knew what it felt like to hold her. And I knew myself, too. Plan or no plan, I wasn’t going to stand by any other time.
And didn’t that make me just as doomed as her?
“You can’t talk to White,” she cautioned as the waiter returned, bringing the pizza, which did smell good, though I still couldn’t be bothered to be hungry. For food. “Flora and Johann are looking out for you. They want to protect you, and you have to let them. That’s the deal.”
“Are you trying to tell me what to do?” I asked her.
“Relax,” she said with a wink as she used the serving spatula to slide a slice of pizza onto one of the small plates before setting it in front of me, “you like it.”
That wasn’t all I liked.
Fuck, I knew I shouldn’t have come back.
I’d gone centuries untouched. And entirely unbothered by it.
Somehow, she’d now rendered me a touch-starved fool.
“Do you want Parmesan?” she asked as she wiggled a little jar full of powdery white cheese at me.
Want?
What Iwantedwas to save her life—for real and for good, not just temporarily. I wanted to protect that light that had been bright and powerful enough to blast me through again and again. I wanted to leave her be and let her grow like the wild rose she was. I wanted to return to her decades from now, after she’d already gotten everything she’d ever wanted out of life and wasreadyfor a new fate.
I wanted other things, too. Things I shouldn’t want.
Days with her.
Nights with her…
I wanted this pizza with her to not be our last as well as our first.
