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“Sweetheart,” he said, unable to give me an answer.
“Everett, I have to know,” I begged.
“A few months to a year,” he said with a sigh of defeat. His hands clung to me and he buried his face in my neck, breathing me in.
“You promised forever,” I protested, unable to wrap my mind around losing my entire world in only a few short months. If he was this sick those days would be spent at his bedside, with him growing weaker by the hour.
“I’ll be with you forever, Shaye. Death isn’t the end for us.”
I wished with everything in me that I could believe him.
ChapterThree
Shaye
Twenty Years Old
Lake and I were side by side on the couch in Everett’s hospital room, our bodies pushed together so we didn’t have to face this alone.
Lake and his parents had already said their long goodbyes, though even those words could never be enough.
The doctors and nurses were working in silence around him but his eyes were locked on me. Somehow the tears weren’t falling yet. I refused to let them blur my last moments with him.
I hadn’t slept or eaten in days. It was too hard to keep anything down. As the days and hours ticked down, I selfishly wanted every second with this man that I could get.
My fingers brushed over the bite mark on my wrist. He had claimed me the night before he left for college, before we knew all this, and I’d never been more grateful to have his mark on me forever.
However short forever might be.
“It’s time,” the doctor said as he adjusted the IV. He stepped back, monitoring but giving us space. He was taking him off everything but the pain medication, letting him slip peacefully into death. He couldn’t hold on any longer. My poor mate fought so hard.
Everett lifted his hand and I was moving, pulling Lake with me. We settled on either side of him on the bed and held him close, careful not to jostle the needle in his arm.
“I love you forever, sweetheart. Always remember that.”
“I love you, too,” I said in his ear as I pressed one last kiss to his lips. He brushed a kiss over his twin’s temple before turning to me. Our eyes locked and neither of us could look away.
I don’t know how long it took as I clung to him. But when his eyes closed for the last time and breath no longer rattled in his chest, my screams were all I could hear.
I’d held onto my pain for him, kept as strong as I could manage. But now I let it break me. The pain was already engulfing me. What started as a small fire was now a raging inferno that was burning me alive.
Strong arms pulled me away from Everett but I fought hard against the hold. If I let go that was it.
He was truly gone.
“Shaye, please,” Lake cried. “We have to go now.”
“How?” I asked but he didn’t have an answer. Instead he wrapped his arms tighter around me and helped me out of the room.
We somehow managed to get back to his place but I couldn’t face a single soul. I walked up to Everett’s room and curled into a ball on the bed he would never lay in again.
It still smelled like him and I clung to his blanket, pulling it over my head so I could drown in his scent.
“Everett, I can’t do this without you,” I said into the silence. His voice didn’t answer and that was just as painful as watching the life leave his gorgeous turquoise eyes.
At some point, I felt someone come in and check on me and I hated myself for making his family worry about me at a time that was already terrible for them.
“Shaye baby, it’s Mom.”
