Watching his agonized expression, I felt like touching him, reassuring him, but exercised every last ounce of my self-control to keep still and hold my tongue. He had obviously thought about what he wanted to say, and I didn’t want to distract him from it.
“You’ve just been through a great loss. And the last thing I want is to make things more painful for you than they already are. If I were a normal guy, living an everyday life, I wouldn’t even be talking to you about this. We would just hang out, see how it went, and if things worked, great. If not, we would each go our own way.
“But I can’t do that in good conscience. Not with you. I can’t let someone who I feel I could care deeply for begin this journey without knowing the consequences. Knowing that I’m different. That I have no idea what this could mean if it goes further. . . .” He seemed both dismayed by his own words and determined to spit them out. “I hate even having to talk to you like this. It’s too much, too fast.”
He paused for a moment and looked down at our hands, separated by mere inches of cobblestone.
“Kate, I can’t stop myself from wanting to be with you. So I’m putting all of this forward for you to consider. To decide what you want. I want to try. To see how we could be. But I will walk away right now if you give me the word—only you know what you can handle. What happens next, with us, is up to you. You don’t have to decide right now, but it would be nice to know how you feel about what I’ve said.”
Drawing my feet up from where they dangled off the edge of the quay, I wrapped my arms around my legs. I rocked back and forth for a few minutes in silence and did something I rarely allowed myself to do. I thought about my parents. About my mother.
She teased me for being impetuous, but had always told me to follow my heart. “You have an old soul,” she said once. “I wouldn’t say this to Georgia, and for God’s sake, don’t tell her I told you this. But she doesn’t have the same intuition you do. The same ability to see things for what they are. I don’t want you to be afraid to go after the things you really want in life. Because I think you will want the right things.”
If she could only see what I wanted now, she would eat her words.
Shifting my eyes from the passing boats to Vincent, sitting motionless by my side, I studied his profile as he looked out at the water, lost in his own thoughts. It wasn’t even a choice. Who was I trying to fool? I had made my decision the first time I saw him, whatever my rational mind had tried to convince me of since then.
I leaned toward him. Reaching up with one hand, I swept my fingers down his arm, running their tips along his warm skin. He turned his head and looked at me with a longing that made my heart skip a beat. I brushed my lips against the bronzed surface of his cheek and braced myself to have the strength to say the words I knew I must. “I can’t, Vincent. I can’t say yes.”
His eyes showed pain, despair even, but not surprise. My answer was the one he had expected.
“I’m not saying no, either,” I continued, and he visibly relaxed. “I’m going to need some things if we’re going to see each other.”
He let out a low, sexy laugh. “So you’re making demands, are you? Well, let’s hear them.”
“I want unlimited access.”
“Now that sounds interesting. To what, exactly?”
“To information. I can’t do this if I don’t understand what I’m getting into.”
“Do you need to know everything right away?”
“No, but I don’t want to feel like you’re hiding anything either.”
“Fair enough. As long as it goes both ways.”
A slight smile lifted the corners of his perfectly sculpted lips. I looked away, before I lost my courage.
“I need to know when I’m not going to see you for a while. When you do the death-sleep thing. So that I won’t worry that I’ve driven you off with my mortality. Or my incessant questions.”
“Agreed. That’s easy enough to schedule, when things are normal. But if something were to happen to . . . throw things off . . .”
“Something like what?”
“Do you remember being told about how we stay young?”
“Oh. Right.” The awful image of Jules jumping in front of the train returned to my mind’s eye. “You mean if you were to ‘save someone.’”
“Then I would be sure to get word to you from one of my kindred.”
I remembered hearing him use that word before. “Why do you say ‘kindred’?”
“It’s what we call one another.”
“Kind of medieval-sounding, but okay,” I said skeptically.
“Anything else?” he asked, looking every bit like a naughty schoolboy waiting to be given his punishment.
“Yes. It doesn’t have to be right away, but . . . you have to meet my family.”
Vincent laughed outright, a rich sound that startled me with its amusement and relief. Leaning toward me, he took me in his arms and said, “Kate. I knew you were an old-fashioned girl. A girl after my own heart.”