“Pfft. Is that the same future where Gabrielle took on an angel? Dropping the ball, Leanne.”
“You think I haven’t already spent hours pouring over how this should go?” Leanne asked. Her appearance was a testament to it. She looked worn. “I don’t have the time and mental capacity to figure out the future in its entirety and live life in real-time.”
I didn’t know what Leanne had seen, but I now understood how this could go very wrong. She mistook an angel for Andre based on her inability to foresee either’s future. And that small detail could’ve meant the difference between life and death.
A car door slammed. I swiveled towards the noise, and I swear the world went silent for a moment.
There.
He.
Was.
Andre strode towards me, the wind whipping his hair and coat. As soon as our eyes locked, all those images I’d seen when we first met swept through me. Me and him, laughing, crying, kissing, in formal attire, naked, in the sun, in the rain. Always touching, always together, forever and ever and ever and—
Severed.
The images ripped away from me violently. My heart clenched. It still had the muscle memory of a time when it held him inside it. I closed my eyes. He was a beautiful illusion that had come to destroy what little was left of my heart.
“Soulmate.”
I opened my eyes. He hadn’t disappeared.
Disbelief and the purest form of hope moved across his face. He took a step forward.
I should run, I should force him to keep his distance and allow him to grow to hate me the way nearly everyone else did. But in the end I couldn’t.
I was moving and he was moving and I couldn’t look away and my heart ached and ached and ached because he wasn’t mine anymore.
He wasn’t mine.
And then Andre swept me into his embrace and crushed me against him. My hands gripped his upper arms, and they couldn’t decide whether to push him away or pull him closer. My mind and my heart were utterly conflicted.
“Andre.” My voice came out broken.
His body shook. “I thought I’d lost you. I thought I’d lost you. Please never leave me again. Please.”
I couldn’t make that promise before last night, and I definitely couldn’t make it now. In another world and another life he and I were human, and worlds and bonds didn’t separate us.
He didn’t wait for my promise. His head dipped and his lips crashed into mine. That was the only way to describe it—crashing together, like some terrible train wreck.
I twined my arms around his neck, wishing I could melt into him. He tasted like I remembered—like home. Sharp tears pricked my eyelids. All I wanted to do was live in this moment and never go back. Just him and me and our lips and tongues and no distance between us. But the moment came and went and that little voice inside my head kept saying, not mine, no longer mine.
My emotions tangled together, and for the first time since I arrived back on earth, I felt human again.
“Andre, I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” I couldn’t stop saying it. Maybe if I repeated it enough, it would wipe away any suffering he went through.
“Shhh, it’s okay,” he said, running a hand over my hair. “It’s going to be okay.”
How to tell him it wasn’t though?
The tears I tried to hold back now trickled down my cheeks.
He brushed them away with his thumbs. “You still cry blood,” he said, his tone laced with … relief? Satisfaction that I hadn’t wholly changed?
My bloody tears glimmered on his hand, and … oh my God.
I caught his wrist. “Don’t let it touch the ground.”
“I wasn’t going to.” He brought his hand—and mine along with it—to his lips.
Even worse.
I jerked Andre’s hand away. “Stop. Don’t—it’s unholy.”
That … sounded crazier than it should’ve.
He paused, then carefully brushed his hand off on his shirt. “Better?” he said.
I swallowed and nodded.
“You still have your fangs,” he said, wonder filling his voice.
“I do.”
“And your glamour,” he said, touching my cheek as my skin dimmed.
A crazy laugh wanted out. I clamped my jaw shut. I was an unholy, taint-of-the-earth badass. I needed to start acting like one.
Something pained entered Andre’s features. “I can’t feel you.”
I should’ve known this would come up immediately. I looked away, staring out at the dark night. “That’s because I’m bonded to something else.” A shiver worked its way up my spine.
Andre went rigid. His eyes flashed, and his hair lifted. “Who are you bonded to?”
“You already know,” I whispered quietly, finally meeting his gaze.
Bad idea.
God, don’t cry again.
I was hurting him all over.
His power flared out. I felt it pass through me, rippling the air and earth as it moved outwards.
“Has he hurt you?” Even without our connection I could feel Andre’s power building on itself.
I shook my head. “I’m fine.”