“No! I’m not Mom. I didn’t understand her breakdowns before, or what they did to you, but I do now. I get it. But you don’t get to control this part of my life. And if you try to punish him and the slayers because I want to be with him, then you will lose me. I will move out. And who do you think will be there to take me in?”
I gave another yawn, this one nearly cracking my jaw. My eyelids drifted closed, and the rest of the conversation faded from my awareness.
Not over... Will try again... You’re not going to win... Z.A.’s voice filled my head, oozing past the barriers I’d managed to build.
I wanted to reply, but there was a strange fog in my head, muddying up my words.
“—still sleeping,” Kat said.
“Yes,” Cole said. “She sleeps all the time.”
I tried to open my eyes but couldn’t quite manage it.
“I’m worried about her.” Kat said. “I’ve never seen her look so...fragile.”
Were they talking about me?
“She’ll recover,” Nana said. “I’m not going to lose her.”
Nana was here, too?
If Cole replied, I missed it.
I wasn’t sure how much time passed before I felt warm fingers brush through my hair. At last the fog dissipated. I pried open my eyes as sparks of energy bloomed. Nana was gone, I realized. Kat and Reeve were asleep. Cole was next to me, his eyes closed. He absently stroked my scalp.
I smiled. I needed more of this, more of him.
I thought about the journal. The answer. Light. Fire. Clearly, he was a light to me. Just as clear, I burned for him. But there was more, something I was missing.
To-do: figure it out, and fast. Time was running out.
*
“—I’ve always known,” Frosty was saying to Kat.
My eyelids fluttered open, and I realized two things at once. I’d fallen asleep while Cole stroked me, and morning had arrived.
Frosty sat beside Kat’s bed, holding her hand. Her other had tubes sticking out of it—tubes attached to a dialysis machine.
Her eyes widened with shock. “You have?”
“Well, yeah. Kitty Kat, I’m, like, a master black ops agent man, and not just when it comes to Call of Duty. To hang around you, and to let you hang around my friends, I had to know all about you. I never said anything about your illness because I wanted you to trust me enough to admit the truth on your own.”
Oh, wow. He’d always known.
“Well, that didn’t stop you from asking a bazillion questions about what I was doing each day,” she grumbled.
“I was giving you the opportunity to come clean,” he said with an unrepentant grin.
“It was entrapment, you turd, plain and simple. I should be furious with you.”
He arched a brow. “Should?”
She sighed. “For some reason, I’ve never found you sexier. And you know I have trouble staying mad at anything sexy.”
He barked out a laugh, but sobered only a few seconds later. His gaze pierced her, intense and demanding. “I want you healed, Kat. I want you around, tormenting me, forever.”
“I want that, too,” she whispered. “More than anything. And I’m sorry I’ve broken up with you so much. I just didn’t want you to see me while I was sick. I didn’t want your sympathy or pity, or worse, you staying with me because you felt obligated.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for. You made me chase you, and I loved it. And I stayed with you because I love you, no other reason.”
My heart constricted. I shouldn’t be listening to this. It was private. A moment of vulnerability and longing I wasn’t meant to share. I rolled to my other side, giving the pair as much privacy as possible, and came face-to-face with Cole.
He was watching me.
“You look better,” he said.
“You’re still here,” I replied. I wasn’t sure why I was surprised.
“Of course I am. There’s nowhere I’d rather be.”