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I’ve lived long enough to know that fate works in mysterious ways—when it comes to mates and just about everything else.
I wish Lucy and Nathaniel well and make my escape just as the band launches into a moody ballad about the one who got away. The lyrics compel my gaze back to the raised platform, but the beauty with the magnetic gaze is gone, replaced by a man in gold hot pants and a see-through mesh t-shirt.
It’s for the best—that girl is a temptation best avoided—but my stomach still drops as I weave my way through the crowd and out of the VIP section.
I would have liked to see her one last time, to have at least nodded good-bye though we never said hello.
I’m still thinking of the woman and how curiously…familiar she felt when I step out into the empty passage behind the stands, and she emerges from the ladies’ room just a few feet ahead. I stop in my tracks, our eyes lock, and she laughs.
The sound is so husky and real that I can’t help laughing along with her.
“I knew it,” she says, crossing her arms over her chest.
“Knew what?” I ask, moving closer.
I can’t help it. I’m drawn to this woman. She’s like one of those tractor beams from the space shows my brother Darcy secretly enjoys watching when he’s restless during the day—dazzling and inexorable.
The beauty cocks her head to one side. “I knew you were going to follow me.”
“I didn’t follow you,” I say, before I feel compelled to add, “I wanted to. But I didn’t.”
“Well, why not?” she asks, gliding a step toward me, until only a few inches separate her sweet, clove-scented skin from mine. “Are you married? Otherwise taken? Shy? Depressed?”
I arch a brow. “Depressed?”
“Depression makes people forget how amazing it is to kiss someone you’re really into.” Her gaze flicks down to my lips, sending a jolt of arousal burning through my blood, making me wonder if perhaps I have been depressed.
I certainly haven’t felt longing like this in years, maybe decades.
“You don’t even know my name,” I murmur, my voice rough with the need I’m trying, and failing, to suppress.
“Name shmame,” she says, bobbing a bare shoulder, making me thank the Goddess for whoever invented tank tops. Especially silky, nearly see-through ones like the one she’s wearing with those tight black jeans. “I can tell you’re my kind of person. It’s in the eyes. You’re not like all the people who grow up, get stuck, and let the shitty parts of life suck the magic right out of them. You’re still curious and…alive. Really alive.”
I hum low in my throat, torn between telling her she couldn’t be more wrong about that “alive” part and confessing that she’s absolutely right. I may technically be dead, but I know what she means. My curiosity is still as keen as it was when I was a boy.
It’s part of what makes my curse so devastating.
If I weren’t still so fully alive, perhaps knowing the exact date of my impending death wouldn’t be so painful.
“I should go,” I say, the reminder of why I can’t go looking for magic with a woman like this loosening the hold of her tractor beam energy. Any woman deserves better than a man doomed to walk into the sun in just four years, but especially an extraordinary woman like this one.
I take a step back, but she reaches out, taking my hand.
“Please, don’t,” she whispers, her tender heart in her eyes. “Don’t go. I don’t want to be alone. Not tonight.”
“What’s special about tonight?”
“Not special really, but…” She swallows. “I miss my family. My sisters and I are super close, but I haven’t been able to get any of them on the phone in days, and I just… I could use a friend.”
And just like that, I’m hers. “Where do you want to go?”
“Everywhere.” She smiles and her fingers tighten on mine, filling me with an electric certainty, a rush of peace laced with elation that I’ve never felt before. All I know is that touching her is so…right. Maybe the rightest thing I’ve ever known. I couldn’t pull away from her if I tried.
So why try?
Why not enjoy this one perfect night?
“I’m leaving tomorrow morning,” I say, holding her kind, fearless gaze, knowing I owe her the same fearlessness in return. “I can’t promise you more than a night, Chicago, no matter how much I’d love to.”
