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"But what kind of a life would it be without you?"
"Any life is precious. And it needn't be forever. After you've mastered your mental control— "
"You said that would take thirty-five years! You want me to wait until I'm a senior citizen before coming back to you? At that point, making love to you would probably still be fatal. I'd have a heart attack from the unexpected activity."
An invisible fist punched through his chest and squeezed his heart. He couldn't draw a breath, and couldn't hear past the high-pitched whine in his ears. Time had once again played him for a fool. His beautiful, passionate wife would leave, never to return. Even if she came back after she'd honed her mental skills, it would be another woman, bearing her name and her time-ravaged face, who returned to him. His darling Rebecca would never come back.
He shook his head, forcing himself back to the here and now. "The important thing is that you'd be safe. You'd have a life, even if it didn't include me."
"You just don't get it, do you?" She closed her eyes, and screwed up her face in concentration. And then the waves of mental images hit him.
Rebecca, returning to her apartment. A series of friends and acquaintances, each of whom she tried to mentally reach out to, searching for the connection she'd found with him. Each failure made her that much more bitter and alone. She funneled her energy into her work, producing probing and insightful articles and reports. Until she started to report things known only to the people she interviewed, that her burgeoning telepathic gifts had pulled during the interview. Unable to tell the difference between the two types of hearing, she exposed secrets her subjects intended to hide. People no longer wanted her to interview them. After a few complaints and threats of lawsuits, her editors no longer trusted her reports. Her career started a long decline, culminating in her expulsion from the most disreputable of the tabloid rags. Her beautiful chestnut hair had turned gray from the constant stress, and her pixieish face had turned pinched and drawn from worry. Harsh lines scored her countenance, and her clothing hung from her emaciated body. She returned to her apartment, now a dingy walkup in a dangerous part of town, and tried to drown her sorrows in the alcohol that blunted her too-sharp perceptions. Then she walked into the bedroom and opened the nightstand drawer, reaching inside for the gun she kept there....
He broke their mental contact, opening his eyes to search her pale white face. She met his gaze with her direct gray stare.
"Do you— " His voice broke, to his chagrin, and he started again. "Do you really expect it to be like that?"
"Yes. Or worse. You said your curse would kill me if you admitted you loved me. Well, even if I leave, it will. The knowledge that I loved and was loved, and threw it all away, will eat at me until I can't bear to go on."
He righted one of the chairs she'd knocked over earlier, and sat down. He wanted to protect her, to keep her safe, and to ensure her happiness, even at his own expense. But he'd thought returning her to her previous life would carry no risks. A cold dread snaked through his stomach.
"There's a way to prevent that. If you returned to your old life exactly the way that you left it, with your mental powers dormant...." He swallowed and looked away, unable to even finish the suggestion. But if saving her required sacrificing her memories and love of him, he would do it.
"Pretend the last few weeks didn't happen?" she whispered in stunned disbelief. "Wipe them out of existence, along with everything that happened during them? Destroy our love, as if it never was?"
"If that's what it takes to protect you— "
"Then the cost is too high."
"But— "
"No."
They stared at each other, stalemated. Not for the first time, she had him completely at a loss for words. Finally, she broke the silence.
"You keep saying you want to protect me. That's sweet, and very noble of you, but you forgot to ask me one very important question. You never asked if I wanted to be protected. And Desmond, I don't. I'm a fighter. I don't want to sit on the sidelines where it's safe. I want to be playing the game."
He sighed and rubbed the back of his neck where a tension headache was forming. Everything she said made sense, but—
"I can't do it. I can't risk taking your life. It goes against everything— "
"You said you'd never take anything that wasn't freely offered, didn't you?"
He nodded, unable to answer. There was only one reason she'd ask that question now, and he had the irrational hope that if he didn't speak, she wouldn't either. He was wrong.
"Then I offer you my life, freely and without hesitation." Her eyes hardened into chips of granite. "But I refuse to let you take my hope. I refuse to let you take my dreams."
"Rebecca, please. Reconsider."
"No. I've made my position clear. What are you going to do about it?"
He stared into her eyes, searching for any sign that she might weaken. Two chips of diamond glittered back at him. She would not be moved.
He loved her more in that instant than he ever had. And she was right. He couldn't live without her.
He would have to keep from infecting her. If he failed, he would watch her die in his arms, knowing he'd caused her death. She'd given him no other choice.
"What am I going to do about it? What can I do?" He sighed. "I'm going to love you. Forever."
