Page 84 of Lost in the Moonlight

I blocked the door, reaching out to tip her chin up so I could see the torment I felt drifting through the room. Damn. I’d never sleep again if it meant her retreat. I didn’t need sleep. I’d proven it for the almost twenty-nine years of my life.

“What happened while I was passed out?” I demanded. “Why do you suddenly regret it? Regret me?”

She swallowed hard, shaking her head. “I don’t. Not the way you mean. What we did... Like I said last night, it was beautiful…” She tugged at the necklace with her dad’s ring. “It was more than beautiful. A memory I’ll never forget.”

“Itwasbeautiful. And we can make more of those memories. Tonight. Tomorrow. Next year.”

She pushed my hand away, stepping back and pressing the heels of her hands to her eyes as if fighting tears.

“Don’t you see? That’s exactly what we can’t do.” It was barely a whisper.

My heart spasmed. I wasn’t stupid. I knew what she meant. I knew the chasm that laid between us, but I was determined to fight. Determined to find a way to bury the divide under a mountain of rock and stone. “Is it really that easy for you to give up before we even try?”

“Try what? To get you killed right along with me? Get my mom killed? Don’t you see? It was so selfish of me, Lincoln. I’ve been playing make-believe, pretending I could live in this moment. Pretending that if someone was only willing to take the risk, then I could have this”—she swiped through the air between us—“for however many seconds it lasted. And hell, it had to be okay because, like everyone insists, life is short, right?” Derision crept into every syllable. Self-incrimination. “But I can’t, Lincoln. I can’t. I won’t. I won’t do this to you.”

What had Sienna said? She’s wrong. She isn’t going to die.It hit me all at once. This wasn’t just about Poco, or the Chicago gang, or even the damn press that loved to hate me. This was about her. About the fatal familial insomnia.

Easing closer, I took her hand in mine. She didn’t pull it away, but she did step back and shift her eyes down, keeping the space between us. I wanted to laugh. To tell her not even the air could sever the bonds we’d forged long before we’d consummated them in my bed. “Why don’t you explain what it is you think you’re doing to me.”

She looked up at me with defiance in her eyes, as if trying to deny what was wafting in the very air. “Look, even if it wasn’t risking your life and my mom’s for us to be together, the truth is, we’d still be an impossibility.”

“Again, I’ll ask, why?”

“Lincoln, I might die before I even hit forty!” The words burst out of her like a shotgun blast—frustration and remorse and anger that were all self-directed.

She twisted her father’s ring again, and I realized the damn memento did more than remind her of someone she’d loved and lost. It reminded her of what he might have handed down. Irritation coursed through me. At her dad for maybe giving her the disease. At the Marshals and the Viceroys for ensuring shehadn’t been tested. And even at Willow herself for not allowing love and human connection into her life.

It took me a moment to leash that frustration, and even when I thought I had, my words still came out as a guttural howl. “So what?”

Her eyes whipped up, wide and shocked. “Excuse me?”

I stepped completely into her space, backing her up against the counter and putting my arms on either side of her. “Don’t get me wrong. I have no intention of just standing by and letting you die an early death, whether that’s because some asshole comes after you or because some mutated gene thinks it can get the better of you.”

She huffed out a breath but looked down in that way she did when she was afraid to meet my gaze. “Not even you or your dad or an entire army of scientists can change my DNA.”

Something deep inside me denied Willow had the gene. Denied that this magnificent bright light could be snuffed out before she’d even had a chance to really live. I couldn’t accept it when I’d already had one light squashed too early in my life. But the truth was, I wasn’t sure there was anything to accept. Sienna had insisted Willow wasn’t going to die. And if she wasn’t just some figment of my imagination, then she was tied to whatever was on the other side. Sienna knew things us mortals didn’t. But I had no way of explaining that to Willow. I couldn’t tell her a ghost from the great beyond had assured me she wasn’t sick. If anything, that would make her want to run even more.

So instead, I changed tactics. “Let me ask you something. Do you think I regret even one minute of the time I had with Sienna?”

She stared at me but didn’t respond.

“The things I regret in my life have nothing to do with the time I spent with someone. I’m ashamed of the choices I made that meant Sienna was in the driver’s seat that night, and I hate the fact that choosing to wallow in my past meant I wasn’t standing with Lyrica the day she was shot. But even knowing what I know now, even knowing I’d lose Sienna, if I had the chance to do it all over again, I would. I’d take every second I got with her. Every damn second.”

My body vibrated with the force of my words. My conviction. I wished I couldmakeWillow feel it too.

Her chest was heaving. I reached out to cup her neck, my thumb landing on the wild pulse fluttering there. It made me ache. Made me want to feel it beating at that wild pace because we were skin on skin making love and not because she was fighting her fears.

“I haven’t felt alive in a really long time,” I told her. “I’ve been going through life more vampire than human. More lost than found. But as soon as I pulled you into me in the cemetery, a switch flipped. You’re everything I need. Everything I want. The light forcing back the shadows. I have to believe, no matter what fate hands us, that spending this time, any amount of time, in light with you is worth it.”

Tears flew down her face, and she brushed at them as if she despised them, shaking her head. “You’re wrong. I’m not the light. I’m every shadow that still lingers. I’m everything that could destroy you, and I refuse to be the reason you suffer another great loss. It’s easier, Lincoln, if you just let me walk out the door. It’s easier to stop now before anyone falls too hard. Before we completely shatter.”

“I hate to break it to you, but I’ve already fallen. You walk out right now, and I’ll already break.”

“Don’t say that. Please don’t.”

“I won’t ever lie to you, and the simple truth is…my heart is already yours.”

She inhaled sharply, mouth parting, pulse racing even faster. “You can’t mean that.”

---