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I had no need to worry, though. She had never left Seth's side-literally. She now sat in my spot, pressing Seth between her and the couch's arm. Two stacks of books were on the coffee table, and an open one was on his lap. He finished signing it and glanced up at my entrance with a relieved look.
"But you see," Mary was saying, "until O'Neill is able to confront the darkness within himself, he'll never be able to open himself to Cady. He's had his moments of vulnerability, of course-like the cave scene in Dominant Eclipse -but he's still keeping his armor up-just like on the veranda in Memories of Man -and so it's no wonder-"
"Hey," I said cheerfully. "We should probably get going."
Seth shot up from his seat, looking rather like a trapped animal who had just gnawed its own leg off and was about to run free. "Yes. We don't want to detain Mary any further."
Mary stood up too. "No, no! It's okay. Really. And you have to finish signing my books."
With a grimace, Seth grabbed the last three books and hastily scrawled his signature in them. "Thanks for talking to us," he said. "It's been great meeting you."
"Are you sure you have to go?" she pleaded. "I was going to make some dinner soon." She shot me an accusing look. "And if it's Ginger who needs to leave, I can give you a ride home later in my van-"
"No, really," said Seth, backing up to stand by me. "I appreciate it, but I have to, you know, get back to writing."
Extricating ourselves was painful. Mary begged and kept offering everything from discount jewelry to thinly veiled sexual suggestions.
"Step on the gas and do not look back," Seth told me when we got in the car.
I complied, peeling out of her driveway as fast as I could and kicking up dirt and gravel in the process.
"That right there," I mused, "is the kind of fan who keeps authors in their crawlspace."
Seth leaned his head back against the seat. "Do not ever do that to me again. Ever."
"I wasn't that far away. I would have heard you screaming."
"Not if she used ether first. God, Georgina. She had her hand on my leg."
"That's Ginger to you."
"Please tell me you got something useful out of that. I know you didn't go to the bathroom."
"Nope. I broke into her workroom and ransacked her files."
He groaned. "Breaking and entering."
"Hey, I'm a creature of Hell. And she technically let us in."
"What'd you find?"
Eyes on the road, I reached into my purse and fumbled until I found the picture. I handed it to Seth.
"This is it?" he asked.
"I'm not certain. It's close to the description, but I don't know enough about this to really say."
"Hmm."
Seth studied it and then slipped it back into my purse. We rode for a few more minutes in silence until I finally asked, "I was never that bad of a fan, was I? That crazy?"
"Oh, God, no," he said. "Absolutely not. You were charming and cute and-" He abruptly cut himself off, but those words hung in the air between us. "You-you weren't like that. Nothing like that," he managed at last. There was a husky tone to his voice, hinting of some emotion but refusing to reveal which one it was.
I'd meant my comment to be light, just a way to keep the conversation going. However, like everything else lately, the words had ended up triggering far more meaning than I'd intended. I had a flashback to when Seth and I had first met, when I hadn't even known who he was. I'd rattled off my feelings for my favorite author, little knowing I was actually talking to him. Unlike Mary, I hadn't stalked him on the Internet and known what he looked like.
Seth cleared his throat. "So...what will you do with the picture now?"
I ran with his change in subject. "Get someone to identify it, I guess. Erik, maybe. Or Dante."
More silence fell, and I felt the tension ratchet up. Dante. Once again, harmless words had triggered big consequences between us. I expected Seth to try again to shift the subject, but instead, he actually addressed it.
"It's weird...seeing you with Dante."
"Don't you mean it's weird seeing me with anyone?"
"Well..."
Even with my eyes on the road, I knew he had that thoughtful, slightly distracted look in his eyes that meant he was pondering how best to phrase his next words. I used to love that look. Now I was on high alert.
"Yeah, to a certain extent, of course," he finally admitted. "It'll always be weird. But every time I talk to him, I just think..."
"If you say that I can do better, then I'm pulling this car over right now."
"Um, no. I was just going to say he doesn't seem like your type."
"That's nearly the same thing," I pointed out. "You sound just like Hugh and the others. I'm getting so sick of this! Honestly, it doesn't matter who I date. You're never going to be happy."
"That's not true," said Seth. "It's just...when you're around him, you're darker and more cynical. You're not like you used to be. This sounds stupid, considering what you are, but you're...well, you're a force for good in the world."
"Oh, come on ," I said.
"No, I mean it. Maybe you are a creature of Hell, but people feel better when they're around you. You have this way of talking and smiling that affects everyone. You're nice, you're good-hearted, you worry about others..." He sighed. "But when you're with Dante, it's like all that light that normally shines out from you gets sucked away."
"That light got sucked away a long time ago," I said bitterly. "Long before he came along."
"No, it didn't. It's there, and if you're going to be involved with someone, you need someone who sees it, someone who loves you for it and wants to help bring it out."
I had someone like that , I thought. You .
"Dante and I work well together, no matter what any of you think. He understands me."
"No," said Seth flatly. His voice was low, but I could hear the anger in it. "He doesn't."
"What other options do I have? You're throwing me into an impossible situation. You know I can't date anyone who's good. I can't risk hurting them, but I don't want to be alone. This is my only option."
"No. It can't be. Before we were together, it wasn't like this. You weren't drinking all the time and having sex with anonymous guys in bathrooms!"
And that's when I did it, just like a dad on a road trip. I pulled the car over to the side of the road. It was a long, country highway, and there wasn't much traffic. Seth stared incredulously.
"What are you doing?"
"Saving us from an accident," I growled, turning so I could meet him straight in the eye. "And you'll be lucky if I don't make you get out and walk the rest of the way. Look, you want to know why I wasn't dating loser guys when we met? Because I wasn't dating anyone . I took my hits and went home alone. Why is it so wrong for me to want to be with someone now?"
"It shouldn't matter if you're dating someone or not. You still shouldn't be acting like this!"
"You're telling me what I should and shouldn't be doing? It's my business. You have no right!" I yelled back.
"Friends have every right to tell friends when they're on a bad path," he snapped back.
"Bullshit! I've never seen you interfere with anyone else's life, no matter how badly they were screwing it up. I'm the only one you seem to want to mess with. Why do you care so much about what I do?" Seth and I had raised our voices only rarely while dating, and it had never even come close to this. It was a wonder we didn't shatter the windows.
"Because I care about you! I told you that at the party. Breaking up doesn't mean you stop caring about someone."
"Yes, but it means you have to let them go." I was so upset that I was on the verge of tears. "You can't have it both ways. You can't get rid of me and then try to pull me back..."
"I never wanted to get rid of you."
I stared at him for several heavy moments and felt those traitorous tears brimming heavier and heavier in my eyes. "Then why did you do it?"
After all that yelling, his voice sounded barely like a whisper.
"Because...I wanted to save you."
"You can't," I murmured, swallowing the tears back with great effort. "You can't keep saving me, can't keep trying to. It's too late."
