Page 98 of By the Pint

I was getting everything I’d ever dreamed of. It was all finally happening. But …

It felt shitty.

So overwhelmingly shitty.

Like I’d made the wrong decision.

Or a never-ending slew of wrong decision after wrong decision.

But there was no decision to be made here. Not a right one. Not a wrong one. I could become immortal, cheat death, and ‘live’ forever. Or I could exist in a painful and turbulent half-life. Not even a half-life, a fraction of a life. Five to eight years. Longer, perhaps, with the weight of good doctors and the best treatment money could buy.

But I’d have him.

Even with a shortened life, I’d have Dima.

I felt like maybe anything was possible, that I could cope with anything.

With him beside me.

Casey?someone said into my mind. Not Killian, because as far as I was aware, he was in the steel boxed-in library. Besides, it didn’t sound like Killian, it sounded like …

I sat bolt upright on the couch, praying so fucking hard I didn’t imagine his voice through a vivid, desperate hallucination.

He was more than two hundred miles away from me. It shouldn’t be possible for him to project a thought that far. Unless …

The quick glance I gave the doorway to my room told me he was not here. I mean, no, he wouldn’t have travelled to Killian’s anyway. He hated Killian, and the sun had only just gone down. He wouldn’t have been able to get from the Red Eye station to Killian’s castle without exploding.

I must have imagined it.

Gods, I missed him so fucking much.

Dima?I said back into the void, just in case.Can you hear me?Desperation clung to every letter of every word.

A few minutes passed. Or perhaps they were only seconds. My heart sank somewhere below the seat of my pants. The adrenaline from hearing his voice, or imagining I heard his voice, finally waned, leaving a dull, hungry ache throughout my body.

And then, almost so quiet I missed it, but unmistakably him, he said,Moonflower?

32.

Dima

“Okay, what goesAhhhhh?”Goldie said, sprawled out on the small leather couch in my room. His head on one armrest, a leg draped over the back, and a fist-sized red ball clutched in his hand.

“There’s really no point in telling a joke to a telepath,” I told him. I stared at the velvet lining of my coffin as I curled up into the foetal position and lamented never buying a bed when I was originally furniture shopping.

“A sheep with no lips!” he said, anyway. He paused for my reaction, but when he didn’t get one, he continued to throw his ball into the air and catch it again one-handed.

Goldie had taken the week off work to babysit me. Which he had done from my sofa, only leaving to make himself food, use the bathroom, or to encourage me to drink. The time he spent with me he alternated between trying to make me laugh and trying to get me to sleep.

“Need me to rock you in my arms like a baby?” he would say. “I’m strong enough to lift you. You don’t think I’m strong enough?”

“Don’t, Goldie. I’m not in the mood,” I would say back. Or some variation. “You can go, though. Leave me to wallow in my own self-pity.”

“No way, dude. You’re stuck with me until six. And then Holly’ll take over.”

And this was how it was. Goldie on the day shift, and my other flatmates, Holly, Taurin, Joey and Mal, would take the evening and night shifts watching me, making sure I didn’t do anything stupid like go out onto the roof and wait for the sun to rise.

It was fine. I didn’t mind them being in the room with me, even if eighty percent of my babysitters were coupled up and sickeningly, blissfully in love.

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