Page 19 of Where the Light No Longer Follows

“Nothing. Nor he or I have control over that. If it is his time to go, no one can stop it. Unless he runs under a car. That we can definitely stop.”

“Isn’t that changing fate?”

“There are so many paths to fate. We make choices every day that lead us to many new paths. They erase and form, erase and form all over with every choice we make. If Tommy were to run under a car, would you want me to save him?”

Her lips parted. “Yes. If Tommy wishes to be saved.”

Gabriel took a deep breath and let out a sight. “You’re asking me to let go of something I love just because they wish to be let go.”

“It isn't for you to choose.”

“How is it not? If they let me love them, why won’t they let me save them?”

“And if they don’t want to be saved?”

“How would they know they don’t want to be saved if they’ve never been saved before? I’d rather take my chances,” he said, lowering Tommy on the sofa as he went to grab the teacups. “I’d rather they hate me, I’d rather they blame me and hit me and curse at me than continue to exist knowing I could have done something and didn’t.”

“I think I want to go back now,” she said when he put a teacup on the table for her.

“It’s just tea, Silene. Just have a cup of tea with me.”

Slowly and very reluctantly, she sat at his dinner table. “Why did you bring me here?”

“Just once, I’ve wanted to do this just once.”

“Do what?”

“Invite someone to my home. Make them a cup of tea. Let them meet Tommy.”

Though she did sit down on the other side of the table from him, so close to him, she’d now put up a thousand new walls between them. Gabriel wished he’d never spoken. That he’d just kept quiet to keep her close.

“So, it’s just you and Tommy,” she asked, studying the open plane space of his penthouse.

“I’ve got another room if you’d like to move in. It’s mine, but we can share.”

Her hazel eyes rolled to him, and for the first time there was some amusement there along the perpetual resentment for the silent crimes he’d committed to her, the many crimes he was certain she did not even know he’d committed. “How many other women have you offered to lodge here with you?”

“One. Her name was Grace.” He pointed his head in Tommy’s direction. “His girlfriend. She has lived in my brother’s land for four years now. Not had a girl here since then, that's why he got all excited.”

Silene leaned onto her elbow, pressing her knuckles to her mouth to hide a smile away from him again. “Your tea making skills suck by the way. I might have been dead for a while, but this is the worst tea I’ve tasted.”

He blinked at her and then down at both their teas. “How can anyone fail at making tea?”

“Did you pour milk before or after you poured the hot water?”

“Before.”

Her mouth parted agape. “Blasphemy.”

“The hot water burns the leaves and it tastes bitter.”

“It certainly does not,” she said, laughing, not hiding it from him this time.

He wondered if it had been by mistake. “Next time, you make it.”

She worried her bottom lip between her teeth for a while before she nodded.

And like that, he might have just secured another day with her.