by C. G. Blaine
My hands on her ass and lips still on hers, I let out a frustrated sigh. “Tell me you’re done for the day.”
The second she starts to nod, I throw her over my shoulder. She squeals out my name while I carry her and her bag to my bike. The rest of the world had her all week. From now until Monday morning, she’s mine. I’ll fight anyone who tries to tell me otherwise.
Including her.
On Saturday afternoon, lightning flashes, and thunder roars off and on in the background. The wind blows rain against the windows. Gray and gloom cast a depression over everything outside while Hannah and I lie on the living room floor. My aim was the bedroom, but I got distracted.
She lies on her back, watching me trail my hand over her stomach. My palm and fingertips glow. I let them spark against her skin. Her chest rises faster in response, and I nudge her shirt higher to move farther up her rib cage.
I’ve become more in tune with the mood of the light she gives me. Edgy when she’s angry. Demanding if she’s scared. Liquid gold in my veins anytime she’s turned on. And every once in a while, she’ll look at me, and I can’t describe it any other way than to say, it’s … Heaven.
As if she’s in my mind with me, she asks, “What does it feel like?”
I watch the brief flash between our skin, the power leaving me, only to come right back when her pulse picks up. “Absolutely intoxicating.” My eyes meet hers, and I add, “There’s only one thing in existence better than divine light.”
“What’s that?”
One side of my mouth turns up. “You.”
Her heart rate speeds as I lower my lips to her body. The skin’s still warm from my touch, her fingers tugging at my hair. Fuck the light pumping through me. It’s her I want to feel. I glide my hand down to the button of her jeans.
“What happens when I get older?”
“A lot of things,” I say dryly, tugging down the zipper. “You want the list?”
“I mean, with us.”
The light alters enough that I stop and look at her, not recognizing this one. Not scared, but something else. Heavy. Looming.
She undoes the progress I’ve made on her pants and sits up. “It’s delusional to think you’ll still want to be with me when I’m locking in low rates on a burial plot and you still look, according to your driver’s license, twenty-five.”
I sigh, sitting up next to her, and sweep her hair away from her overly concerned face. “You really don’t need to worry about that.”
I lean in to kiss her, but she presses her hand to my chest.
“Why not?”
“Because I told you, you’re my forever.”
Again, I attempt to bring my lips to hers. She stops me. I lower my head and take a deep breath. She’s not going to let this go until we have, what I consider to be, a pointless conversation. My fate was sealed the second I realized I never wanted to exist without her. There’s only one way for that to happen.
Once I clear my mind of everything I want to be doing to her right now, I look up. “You don’t need to worry because I’ll be old with you.”
Hannah’s expression stays the same even though an intense weight settles into my core. “How?”
“The Fallen have the choice of becoming mortal,” I tell her. “We can live a life, die, and face judgment alongside the rest of humanity.”
I never expected to even consider the option. It sounded like a ticket straight into a devastating nothingness. Until her. Now, a chance to live and die with her—to give her everything she deserves and then spend the entirety of the beyond with her—it’s the best gift I’ve ever been given.
“But then you won’t be an angel when you go to Heaven.”
“No.” The sensation inside intensifies with a dash of panic added to the mix. I reach out and skim my finger across her cheek. “And I don’t want to be. If I am, we’ll never see each other again.”
“Never?” she asks, her voice unsteady.
I shake my head. “Not if I’m immortal. It’s hard to explain, but me being human when you die is the only way we can be together. And since I promised you an eternity…”
The light shifts—demanding—as she scrambles to her feet. She secures plenty of space between us, and then she stops and holds a hand to her forehead. “I don’t think I can do this, Cass.”
“What the fuck does that mean?” I ask, shoving off the floor.
“It’s too much.”
She looks at the ceiling, the walls, everything in the fucking room, except for me. It’s irritating as hell, so I close the distance and make her look at me, tipping her face to mine.
“Tell me what you mean.” The command is harsh, but between the way she’s acting and the feeling I don’t recognize that continues to spread through my chest, I can’t help it.
Her eyes settle on mine, her heart pounding and the light surging. “What if I change my mind?” She pauses and then clarifies, “What if I change my mind about us?”
At first, I feel nothing. Not her. Not me. Fucking shell-shocked. Then it all slams into me at once. My hands drop to my sides, and I back across the room. I can’t trust myself near her right now. Not when all I want to do is make her forget what she just said. Remove the possibility of this ending in a way other than with her in my arms.
“I’m only twenty-two,” she says fast. “I have no idea what I’ll want in ten years or twenty. But if you become human for me, I won’t feel like I have any choice other than to be with you. It’s not fair to expect me to decide what I want for the rest of my life before I even know what’s out there. I’ve only been here a few decades, but you’ve been alive since—”
“Existed,” I say flatly.
She locks eyes with me. “What?”
“I’ve existed, Hannah. I wasn’t alive until the first time you said my name.”
Looking back now, I know that’s when it started. A trickle that turned into a goddamn waterfall.
The way Hannah looks at me changes the heat coursing through me into something perfect and pure. How it’s supposed to be, with her and me and nothing in the way. I try to hold on to it, but she averts her gaze, and it slips away. We’re back to the heaviness, stronger than ever.
“I need time, Cass,” she says to the floor.
“Great. You’ll have plenty of it,” I bite at her. “I’m not asking to become human tomorrow. Or anytime soon for that matter. It’s years away and not even an option until the demons stop attacking.”
“It’s not just that.”
I let out an exasperated groan. “Of course it’s not.”
She keeps her eyes cast down. “I’m finally getting to a point where I’m not lost in grief. I owe myself a chance to see what that life is like without—”
“Me.” My jaw tenses as I realize what she’s saying. “You want to know what it’s like without me.”
She nods, gutting me with every up-down.
I shake my head in disbelief. How the hell did we go from about to fuck on the living room floor to a fight about my mortality to… “Where exactly are you heading with this, Hannah?”
My chest burns hotter.
She fidgets, taking her sweet time with a response. “I think it’s better for both of us if we go back to being Watcher and Nephilim. Nothing more.”
Jesus Christ.
My hand scrubs over my face as I laugh at that gem. “How the fuck am I supposed to do that?”
She blinks away tears and wipes the one escaping down her cheek. She still refuses to look at me. I start toward her but stop a few feet in front of her. Any closer, and I’ll erase everything since the last time she said she loves me. And she does love me. I feel it in my soul when she looks at me and would feel it with or without the connection to her heartbeat.
“This isn’t what you want, Hannah. I know it’s not.”
“It is,” she whispers. “I’m sorry.”
Another two words powerful enough that the
y rip through me. Only this time, they shred me the fuck apart on their way in. I stand there and watch her chest rise and fall slower. Each deep breath she forces, the less I feel her. The less I feel at all. Before I lose all the light from her, I have to walk away. If I stay, I’ll find a way to make this shitshow even worse.
“You want us back to the way we were?” I snag my keys off the counter. “You got it, sweetheart.”
As much as I would love for that to be my parting line, this isn’t one of the times where I walk out, cool down, and then we fight again until we’re ripping each other’s clothes off. When I slam the door behind me, it will mean more than the end of the conversation. Apparently, it’ll mean the end of us.
I pause in the doorway, not letting myself turn around. God, do I want to turn around.
“However long it takes.” My voice sounds cold, but I can’t manage anything else. “Ten years. Twenty. Hell, make it fifty or a hundred. I’ll wait forever because, now that I know what a life with you is like, I can’t go back to an existence without you.”
A long time ago, I reached a point where it was nearly impossible to alter even the most minor aspect of who I was. Falling in love with Hannah … that’s changed me in ways that can never be undone. It’s there now. Ingrained in me. Always. Whether she spends eternity loving me back or not.
My hand still grips the side of the door, ready to slam it shut when I drop to my bike instead. I rev the engine and focus on anything but the heaviness returning to my body. Part of it me, part of it Hannah. Heartache weighs the same on the soul regardless of whether it’s pouring out of you or the heart of someone you love. For a long time, it rolls over me in waves. Then the sensation from her stops, and I’m alone in the pain. It’s just the divine light inside of me, devoid of anything Hannah.
I’ve never experienced a loss like it.
I already know what waits for me back at the apartment. A half-empty closet, not a candle in sight, and a key on the counter connected to a fucking alligator-shaped keychain. I throw it with enough power to send the lamp it hits crashing to the floor. The tiny release breaks way to an unleashing of pent-up emotions. Anything that reminds me of Hannah is fair game. Which just so happens to be whatever I come across. Books, cushions, shelves, everything on a flat surface. I tear the place apart.
The entire world lurches to a stop the second I feel her again. A burn fills my chest, so I’m no longer empty inside.
She’s thinking of me.
I frantically search the ransacked living room for the crystal ball. I find it on the floor under the notebook with the symbols from the language of creation drawn on the pages. It’s only been a few hours, but I ache to see her, hold her, love her.
Hannah’s image appears in the globe. The room is dark, but moonlight shines through a window, reflecting off her face. Her eyes are closed, face relaxed while she sleeps.
A dream.
It’s a fucking dream.
The ball leaves a hole where it hits the wall. It bounces off the couch and onto the floor where it stays. I swipe a bottle of whiskey out of the tossed kitchen and head to my mess of a bedroom. A few long pulls in, I set the bottle down. I light a cigarette and drop back on the mattress. I stare at the ceiling, a hand behind my head.
For all the time I spent worrying about what it would feel like to lose everything, I never once thought it would play out like this. A slow unraveling of what I want and need until the only reason I’ve ever craved a life decides she wants to live hers without me. The real kicker is what happens next. I’ll watch. Witness it all.
Every.
Fucking.
Second.
Screw ever going back to Heaven. I need to fight my way out of what has somehow become my own personal Hell.
The first day without Hannah, I only leave my bedroom to retrieve the crystal ball and alcohol. I spend the next twenty-four hours drinking with the orb on my chest, watching her.
Fake smiles.
Fake laughs.
Fake nods at whatever advice Terra and Jesse give her to heal a broken heart.
Most of the time, she looks completely unaffected by what’s destroying me. It wrecks me to see, but I keep watching, waiting for when no one else is looking. That’s when she closes her eyes, sucking in short, shallow breaths. The light flooding through me turns heavy, and she lets herself feel the hurt. In these moments, I’m not alone in my grief. Because that’s what I’m doing. For the first time in my existence, I’m grieving. And it’s over the loss of us.
The next two days, I shadow at a distance while she attends classes. Anytime she’s about to walk out of a building, her adrenaline tips me off, a nervousness to the light. She keeps her head down, staring at her feet. With so few students on campus, all it would take is one glance, and she’d see me standing across the street. But the look never comes.
On day four, I ignore a call from Chaz. I’ve been curbside at Terra and Jesse’s house for the past four hours. The first three, I spent chanting, using one of the extra vials of Hannah’s blood I stored away in case of emergencies to make a blocker bag. I texted her that I left it in the mailbox and parked my ass on my bike. Over an hour has ticked by since then. No word. No light from her other than when she read the message. I’m waiting for her to step outside, and she’s waiting for me to leave.
It’s a battle I intend to win. Until a deluge of texts comes through. I sift through the creative insults to get to the reason Chaz insists on river dancing on my nerves. He snagged a Lower out of a gutter and is holding an impromptu interrogation. A chance to crack open Donny’s plan trumps another hour of loitering.
I’m less than a block away when I feel her—the light on edge.
By the time I show up at the warehouse in Colorado, Chaz and Rosdan are already mid-torture session. From the looks of the demon—face swollen, broken extremities, and burn marks from bolts marring most of its flesh—they’ve been at it awhile.
Chaz looks back as I step out of the shadows. “Where the fuck have you been?” Then he gets a better look, and the discharge vanishes from his palm. “Never mind that. What the fuck happened while you were there?”
I assume he’s referring to the four days’ worth of stubble and the fact that I look ready to commit murder. And I am. Not that killing a demon is anything but a service. God knows what this one would do with enough time on Earth.
Rosdan straightens up from next to the demon, deep lines between his eyebrows at the sight of me. He opens his mouth to say something, but I don’t give him the chance.
“You get anything out of him?”
“No,” he answers, smart enough not to push it. “If he knew anything about Donny, he would have talked by now.”
Without any warning, I hurl a bolt. Low charge, but my powers are stronger than yesterday. Chaz barely drops out of the way in time, and the light strikes the demon dead center in the chest.
“What the fuck?” Chaz shouts from somewhere behind me.
I ignore him on my way to finish off the demon. I grip his jaw and tip his head back. The black of his pupils swim outward through his irises and the whites of his eyes until only darkness remains. It seeks an escape since the physical body has nowhere to go with spelled ropes keeping it from teleporting.
My other hand covers his mouth and nose, blocking the potential exits. “What was he doing when you found him?”
Shadows seep out of his wounds and snake down to the floor, keeping as far away from our light as possible. Chaz steps beside me and covers the largest gash. The dark retreats from the glow in his palms.
“He was lurking outside an elementary school,” he says.
Rosdan places his hands over the demon’s ears. “Do we know what he planned to do?” I quirk a brow, inquiring if he really wants to know, and he quickly shakes his head. “Forget I asked.”
Light leaks out from under his hands where they connect with the demon’s skin. The muffled grunts of panic
under my palm go ignored while we smother the darkness. Anything he’d tell us at this point would be complete bullshit. As soon as he goes limp, we all release our hold. The blackness screeches as it’s finally freed, shooting into the rafters and through a hole in the roof.
“A little dramatic,” Chaz deadpans.
Cleanup includes a trip to the Andes. Mountain ranges are an easy place to dump evidence of the eternal pissing match between light and dark. And that’s what it is since neither side can ever win. Both are required to keep the wheel turning. If the balance ever tipped too far in one’s favor, it would wipe out far more than Earth. The entire cosmos would revert to chaos.
Always late to the party, Samy calls right after we leave the warehouse. Rather than pinpoint where the hell we are, Chaz tells him to go to Ros’s guesthouse. After we finish, we’re supposed to drop there, but the side of a mountain, miles away from any other soul, is far more desirable.
I stare over the face of a cliff, standing at the edge with the world spread out below me. I reach for my chest, for the ring resting under my shirt. Right over my heart. I’ve been rubbing my fingers over the band lately, thinking about the inscription that matches the one on Hannah’s finger. Brice promised Fiona a forever’s worth of forevers. I can’t even convince Hannah to be with me for one.
“Kasdaye,” Rosdan shouts over the wind whipping around us. “You coming?”
He steps beside me, and my ledge becomes crowded. His concerned gaze plasters to the side of my face while I hold the ring, not acknowledging him.
After a while, I drop my arm to my side. “I told Hannah I want to be mortal.”
