Page 91 of By the Fae

She paused. Her breaths quivering. “Thank you,” she said finally.

I peeled open my eyes to see tears rolling into her hair.

“I’m so sorry.” I thumbed away the tracks. “It has to be this way.”

“I understand,” she said, immediately closing her eyes and letting her head fall backwards onto the pillow.

The pillow. At some point, the glamour in my room had faded. I climbed off her and fetched a clean towel to wipe her thighs. She watched me, a hollowness to her expression. I knew she was thinking the same.

We hadn’t fucked. We’d made love.

No lives remaining.

Game over.

Chapter 31.

Holly

It happened. Not the sex. Though that was mind-blowing, so I could check that off my list now. But the thing I was convinced would never happen. The thing that he’d explicitly forbidden me from doing.

I fell in love with him.

I was in love with Goldie.

Like arse over tit, soul-crushingly in love.

Love!

I didn’t even know his real name, but I loved him.

All I knew is that I wanted to wake up every day in his sheets. Have him cook for me every night. Play videogames, chat until we fell asleep, watch the sunrise, drive around in his car with the top down, hang out with his flatmates.

I wanted to watch him present his game at the expo. Sit on the sidelines and say,“that’s my boyfriend.”That beautiful man, who at first appears frowny and miserable but is one of the softest, most selfless, considerate people I’ve ever met.

Gods, I wanted that.

I wanted him to get tenure. After three decades at the same company, he deserved it. I wanted an office next to his. We could sneak into each other’s in between meetings and make out. I pictured us both moving into my new apartment. Running barefoot across the wooden floors. Him cooking in my open-plan kitchen, with the exposed brick wall; me in the nook, overlooking the harbour, reading a gaming magazine, spying on his flexing obliques.

To take him home. Introduce him to Mum and Phil. Show him my community.

I was too far gone. I wanted everything.

Perhaps I had known for a while, and I’d simply been lying to myself. Tallywhacker’s, the rooftop, Seth-not-Goldie. These should all have been major clues. Should have been the point in which I untangled myself from his long, muscular fae limbs, and fled.

He loved me too.

I was ninety-nine percent sure.

It was in the way he fixed every one of my ailments without me even asking. I just had to absentmindedly rub my knee, and he’d be on top of me, hands closing around the pain. Only for it to vanish within a heartbeat, and for him to walk around with a limp for the next few hours.

One time, he took my menstrual cramps. “What in the fresh hell is this?” he’d whimpered, whileIfetched him a hot water bottle and a sharer-sized bag of chocolate Gnomies.

If it wasn’t love that made him do that, then I guessed the only other explanation was masochism.

It was in the way he held me, and kissed me, and watched me. I caught him staring often. And when I caught him, he would always smile. Sometimes he flipped me the birdie, or blew me a kiss, and sometimes he made a vagina shape with his hand and rubbed his finger-dick inside while wiggling his eyebrows.

They were perfect eyebrows.

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