I Should Die

THIRTY-THREE



I AWOKE TO THE SENSATION OF VINCENT’S LIPS on my forehead, and opened my eyes to see his face above mine. “Bonjour, ma belle,” he said in his low sexy voice.

I squinted around, not knowing where I was for a moment, and then the hotel room came into focus around me. Oh my God. I was in Vincent’s bed. And it was morning. I had spent the night in Vincent’s bed. And last night we had . . .

My skin lit with a fiery flush, and an unstoppable smile possessed my face. I leaned forward and, letting the covers drop, threw my arms around Vincent’s neck and squeezed him against me.

He laughed and pulled back so he could look me in the eyes. “Was that hug for last night?”

“I love you,” I answered.

He pulled me back to him and whispered, “And I adore you, Kate Beaumont Mercier. With a love I never thought I could feel. With all my soul and every inch of my body. Which, by the way, is now marked by you forever.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. He turned to show me a bluish tattoolike mark on his shoulder. “What is that?” I touched it, mesmerized.

“Isn’t this where you pressed the lock of my hair into my clay doppelgänger?” he asked.

I looked more closely. The mark had a circular pattern to it and was the size of . . . “It’s my thumbprint!” I exclaimed, holding my thumb next to the mark.

Vincent grinned. “That’s what I thought. Very cheeky of you; you not only brought me to life, but you marked me permanently as yours.”

I grabbed him and pulled him down to the mattress. Perching above me, he leaned forward to place an extra soft kiss on my neck just beneath my ear. I shivered and said, “You are mine.”

“I’ve got no argument with that,” he conceded, smoothing my hair back from my face with his thumb. “But I do have the very unfortunate news that in exactly twenty minutes we are meeting your grandfather in the lobby.”

“Hmm, grandfather,” I said. My brain suddenly left the deliciousness of being in bed with Vincent and was gripped by more unpleasant things. Like how I was going to pack and dress in under a half hour.

With lots of running and leaping about, I somehow made it, and in twenty minutes we were climbing into the back of Theodore’s limo. Bran did a repeat performance of the gaping-out-the-window routine that he did on the way in. Papy busied himself with transferring all of the photos he had taken of Theodore’s collection the previous day from his camera to his laptop. I laid my head on Vincent’s shoulder and dozed off, waking as we pulled up to the airport’s private plane terminal.

As we assembled on the sidewalk, I saw Jules step out of the passenger side of a car parked in the drop-off lane in front of us. He headed straight for Vincent with an expression like his best friend was the last person in the world he wanted to see. “Vince, man. We have to talk,” he said, and the two of them walked a short distance away.

Papy and Bran made their way into the terminal with the luggage, but I didn’t follow them. I had a terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach as I watched Jules explain something and Vincent stumble back a step, as if Jules had just stabbed him in the gut. Jules kept talking, folding his arms tightly across his chest, as if he too were in pain.

I looked over at the car that had brought Jules. The bardia driver was just sitting there with the engine idling: What was he waiting for?

I walked in their direction. Something was very wrong.

“You’re being an idiot!” Vincent suddenly yelled, and thrusting his hands into his pockets, he stalked off, slamming the revolving door to the terminal so hard with his shoulder that it ground to a halt before starting back up with a metallic screech. Jules just stood where he was, watching me approach with a pained expression.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“I’m not going back,” he said simply.

“You’re staying here in New York?”

He nodded.

“But why?”

Jules massaged his temples. “Something’s come between me and Vincent,” he said.

I stared at him, confused. “Well, I’m sure you can work it out.”

“No, actually we can’t work it out, Kate,” he responded, gritting his teeth. “There is no possible way of working it out. The only way to salvage this is for me to walk away and leave you two to . . .”

“Leave us?” I asked, incredulous. “What does this have to do with me?”

He lowered his head, breathing shallow breaths. Holding himself together. When he looked up, pain was written across his face as clearly as if it were spelled out in giant letters.

“Do you really have to ask me that, Kate? Can’t you tell?”

“No,” I said, and then suddenly understood. My mouth dropped open, and I shook my head in denial. Jules was my friend. He couldn’t be in love with me. He had a dozen beautiful girls at his beck and call. Girls who weren’t attached . . . to his best friend. “You can’t . . . you can’t be leaving your kindred for . . . me.”

He sighed and looked toward the gray winter sky, as if praying for something to swoop down and carry him far away. When he looked back at me, his eyes were glassy. He reached forward to take my hand.

“Kate. I’ll say it like this. Vincent is my best friend. There’s not a person in this world I’m closer to. But for the past year, I have betrayed him in my heart every single day because I want for myself what he loves the very most.”

I squeezed his hand tightly to fight the numbness paralyzing me. My eyes stung, but no tears came. “I don’t know what to say, Jules. I . . . I don’t . . .”

“I know you don’t feel the same, Kate. That you never have. Never will. And I would rather not live with that reality being pushed into my face on a continual basis. Because, believe it or not, though I die for people on a regular basis, I’m not a masochist.”

His sad smile hit me like a fist. “Oh, Jules,” I said, and threw my arms around his neck.

“There’s nothing else to say,” he murmured, pressing his face into my hair. And then he let go, walked to the waiting car, and drove away without looking back.



“Are you okay?” I asked.

We were halfway across the Atlantic Ocean and Vincent hadn’t said a word. He wrapped his arm around my shoulders, pulled me to him, and kissed the crown of my head.

Leaning my head against his shoulder, I said, “I’m really sorry about Jules.”

Vincent sighed. “Half of me hates him for falling in love with you. And the other half thinks, ‘How could he help it?’”

He pushed my hair back from my face. “What I can’t believe, though, is that I honestly didn’t see it coming. We could have talked it out before it got to this. But I thought that Jules was flirting with you just like he does with any other pretty girl.”

His expression changed from frustration to worry. “You don’t feel the same for him, do you?” he asked, his voice dropping an octave.

I shook my head. “No. I mean, I feel close to him. And to be honest, the attention was flattering. But, as you said, I thought he was like that with everyone. For me, he’s the boy I love’s best friend. And a good friend of my own even apart from that. But I don’t have room in my heart for two.”

Vincent looked relieved.

“Are you mad at him for leaving you at such a bad time?” I asked.

“No. One revenant won’t make a difference to the outcome of a battle. And he swore that if ever I needed him he’d be on the first plane to Paris.”

“You didn’t tell him about JB, did you?”

“No,” Vincent admitted, meeting my eyes. “And I’m not going to. If Jules needs distance, it wouldn’t be fair to tell him something that would pretty much oblige him to come back.”

He took my hand and raised it to his lips, and then pressing it to his chest, he laid his head back against the seat and closed his eyes.

“I’m sorry you lost your best friend,” I said. “I hope he’ll get over it and come back.”

In the softest of voices, Vincent said, “So do I.”