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“What does it feel like?” she murmured from behind him. “What does it feel like when I touch you?”
He groaned, head dropped back. “Avery.”
“Tell me,” she demanded. “I know this is impossible and it doesn’t make any sense and I’ve been wondering for days how this could even be but—I’m tired of trying to rationalize it. Maybe you’re right. Maybe it is just magic and I should accept it. Accept why my heart—”
He couldn’t let her continue. “It feels like sunlight, grá. Like I am finally warm after so many years of being cold.”
She exhaled his name, long and slow. “Then why—”
“To protect you,” he confessed. “To let you go before I damn us both.”
Gently, she turned him. “Then damn us,” she said simply. No part of her wavered before him. “If I’m going to feel this with anyone…I’m glad it’s with you.”
He lifted his hand and touched her cheek.
He didn’t need to be alive to polarize himself to her. To know that the knot in his ribs would always lead him to her, his true and constant north. He did not need to have a heart to give it, to feel alive. Avery commanded it with each breath, stirring the molecules and magic that made him up.
Wolfe gave himself over to it, washed away in her tides.
“Then let’s go to the stones.”
Wolfe found himself back in her car, flickering in and out.
She tethered him, kept him possible, but he felt himself thin out in places. It felt like that space after waking from sleep, when he wasn’t quite sure what was real and what was not, still tipped in dreams.
The faerie circle in question was on the edge of a ledge jutting out over the sea. Avery found directions and pictures online and he studied them, wondering if he could change his mind now. She’d have to climb the line of wet rocks and trek all the way out that narrow path, until it was just the ocean below her.
Part of him wanted to see her like that—standing before the sea like a figurehead on a boat. An immovable object. A permanent fixture in an otherwise fleeting world.
Did she realize what she was giving him?
The memories he would be haunted by? The way he would chase around the echoing sounds of her laughter?
Avery parked the car and wrapped her arms around her chest, shivering against the wind. It tore her hair from her ponytail and covered the corners of her eyes and mouth. Wolfe barely felt it, shirt still against his chest.
“You’re sure?” he asked.
“I’m sure.”
He dipped his chin, praying that God would forgive him for being the most selfish creature that ever existed.
He followed Avery down the stony cliff path, sand and grass eroded away to leave a narrow trail. There was no handrail, just a horrific plunge to the beach below. Another gust of wind slammed into Avery and she wavered, shoulders bunched to her ears.
“This isn’t worth it,” he muttered. “Avery. Turn back.”
“No!” she shouted over the wind. “Have you ever let anyone fight for you?”
That drew him up short. He watched her teeter down the slope, hand shooting out to brace against stones and rock as she navigated the twist down to the next level of the path.
He’d fought for his people, his town.
He’d given up sleep and meals and his own peace and safety for them.
He went days riddled with anxiety and fear when the hunger started.
He worked on fishing boats and in the fields.
Everyone looked at him for answers and guidance, but where did he have to turn? Who shouldered his exhaustion, his fear? Who was there for him when the panic came in his office, when he wore a hole in the rug from his anxious pacing?
