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“It’s progressing too fast, they can’t fight it,” he admitted in a voice so low I would have missed it if not for how intently I was staring at him. His eyes were full of pain and defeat. He had accepted his fate, but I couldn’t. “I tried.”
“This can’t be happening.”
“I wish with everything in me it wasn’t,” he said as his voice broke off into a sob. “You and I were supposed to grow old together. But you have to promise me you’ll still live on without me. I need to know you’ll try.”
Those turquoise eyes begged me to look past my pain and understand, to forgive him for not telling me sooner.
There was nothing to forgive.
Everett wasn’t lying to me, he was protecting me in a way only Everett could.
“How can I? I’m not me without you, Everett,” I argued. “No, please, don’t say this. There has to be something.”
He didn’t answer but the anguish in his eyes and tears on his cheeks gave me my answer. Everett didn’t cry, not like this.
My sobs tore through me in painful hiccups that had my chest cracking open further with each passing second. It felt like someone had ripped my soul from my body and I couldn’t shove it back in if I tried. He was such a part of me that I wouldn’t feel complete without him.
“I’m sorry, I should have told you sooner. But you were the one person in my life who could take my mind away from it all. Talking to you was everything I needed,” he said. “That’s how I want to go out, Shaye, to the sound of your voice and your scent calming me.”
He was begging me to believe him, to help him, to sit back and watch him die. His hands were the ones gripping mine harder this time. He needed me to listen and stick by him.
“Tell me everything,” I said as I tried to calm my breathing. As he spoke I couldn’t help but study him, commit every tic and expression to memory forever.
Even as my mind refused to believe it… I think my soul already knew.
“They found it early in the year and I’ve tried treatments… it just didn’t matter. They’re moving me to hospice now, sweetheart. I’m choosing to die on my own terms. I can’t let you all watch me die slowly and painfully. That would break me.”
Did he think this wasn’t breaking me?
“There is no happy ending here, not for me,” he said as he finally broke down completely. I moved from my chair and onto the floor with him, wrapping my arms around him and holding on as tight as I could.
“I’m here, Everett, always. I love you so fucking much,” I said, pouring out everything he meant to me from the depths of my soul.
He needed me to be strong, but I wasn’t sure I could do it.
My soulmate just told me he was going to die on his own terms, which meant soon. You don’t throw around words like terminal and cry if there is hope.
I couldn’t find it in me to be angry that he’d kept me in the dark. Living with this for months would have been torture and he knew me well enough to know I’d throw it all away for him.
We clung to each other as I felt my soul shatter into a million tiny shards that could never be repaired.
Everett deserved so much better than this.
I wanted to wake up from whatever nightmare this was.
His scent even smelled off now, there was a medicinal hint to it that made my stomach churn. I was so happy to see him today that I missed it.
Now I would never scent my mate again without it.
There was no going back to those summers in Lockwood or the days we spent losing ourselves in each others’ arms.
This was the beginning of the end.
For both of us.
There was no way I could survive this. The pain.
“How long?” I managed to ask in the aftermath of our tears. My voice sounded hollow and his eyebrows furrowed as his fingers teased over my cheek. Even in all this his eyes held the same reverence he’d looked at me with for years.
