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Phoenix is sitting on the swing tucked under a low-hanging willow on the edge of the koi pond. His face is tilted up into the sun, and he looks like a glowing demigod. I see the way his shoulders stiffen a little as I approach, but he doesn’t startle, which means he’s definitely expecting me.
I assess him for a moment, but I already know what I need to do. My cane hits the edge of the swing with a dull thud, and then I touch both of his knees, spreading them as I drop to mine.
My God, ithurts. It sends shooting pains down to toes I no longer possess, but I grit my teeth even as he reaches for my shoulders. His fingers slip ineffectually against the slick fabric of my shirtsleeves, but he doesn’t stop trying to pull me back up.
“What the fuck are you doing, Kane?”
“Hoping that one of these days, when I get on my knees for you, you’ll finally forgive me.” The words come out bitter, even though I know I deserve everything he gives me from now until we die.
Phoenix’s fingers still, and then they trace a path up the sides of my neck and over my jaw. The tips of his right fingers graze along my lips, which I part for him, though he doesn’t dip them inside. He’s just looking for familiar marks, as though he’s afraid I’m some imposter.
“I’ve already forgiven you.”
I laugh against the pads of his fingers. “You’ve said the words. And I know you’re not pissed that the princess is pregnant. I know you’re not jealous the baby is James’. So there’s only one thing I can think of that—”
“I’ll never see it,” he says.
I freeze. Phoenix hasn’t spoken about the things he’ll never see. Not since those first few months after the incident. And even then, those moments hadn’t been a willing confession. They’d been dragged out of him by drugs and alcohol as they loosened his tongue and made him less afraid of his emotional vulnerability.
Now, he sits here stone-cold sober and his hands on my face and the confession on his lips. “I’m still not sure I’ve accepted that I’ll never see you again. Now we’ll have this child, and I—” He stops, then breathes out. “It hurts.”
I have no words for him. Just burning anger and icy resentment toward the man who’s responsible for this. The one who will pay. But like always, there’s a little voice in the back of my mind that reminds me no matter what we do to Guido Romano, it won’t change anything. We must live exactly as we are today.
“I love you,” I tell him.
His lips twitch, and he lets out the smallest scoff. “Get off your knees before you really convince me you’re a secret masochist.”
It takes me far too long, and I bite back my frustration at my newly formed weakness because it’s temporary. I will regain my balance and my strength and my confidence. Though I might keep the cane.
Alice was right—it’s a good look on me.
Phoenix waits until I’m settled beside him, and then he sits back and turns his face back up toward the light. “I’ve forgotten a lot of things. I have this image in my head about what the dawn used to look like when I’d close my eyes and turn my face up toward the sun. Rich, sun-burnt orange. But it feels…surreal.”
I close my eyes. “I can see veins,” I tell him. I can see them cascading through my thin skin. “Purple, pink, red, orange. Like a sunset.”
“I don’t remember that. But we also didn’t have a lot of time to admire that shit back before this happened, did we?”
He’s not wrong. He had sight, I had two feet, but we had no peace, no James, no Ari, and no Alice. And if none of this had ever happened, I’m not sure we would. It’s a strange feeling—to regret and not regret at the same time.
“Did I hurt her feelings?” Phoenix asks after a while.
“Maybe. I think she might be in shock still. I reminded her she has a choice whether or not she wants to go through with the pregnancy, and then I left her with James.”
Phoenix laughs—a low, rumbling sound that’s aged to perfection over the years—and he shakes his head. “It’s a done deal. And James is going to be unbearable when it comes to her and his child.”
“Our child,” I correct him.
It still feels strange to say.
This living, growing thing inside of her will soon take a breath and scream their lungs out and then look at us to protect it from everything we know the world is capable of—because we have done all those dark, depraved things ourselves.
“And you’re going to marry her,” Phoenix says into the silence.
I huff a soft laugh. “So? Don’t tell me you’re jealous all of a sudden.”
“You want me to lie?”
I can’t help myself. I shift closer and take his chin between the fingers of one hand, staring into those bright, unmoving eyes that don’t really belong on his face. “I marriedyouonce, remember?”
