Page 97 of The Last One
“We can’t do this,” he repeats, louder this time.
I freeze.“Why?”
“What if you’re already in love?” He removes my hand from his cheek and kisses it again before placing it on my hip. “We talked about this, remember?”
“We did.” I peer at him, heart pounding, waiting for the punchline.
Is he fucking kidding me right now?
The look in his eyes—no fire, no sparkle—tells me that he’s not.
He wraps one of my curls around his finger. “What if Before Kai doesn’t want the same things that Now Kai wants? And what if who she wants is nothing like me?”
A different kind of heat now warms my cheeks. Embarrassment. Rejection. “Move.”
“Kai—”
“Get the fuck off my bed.”
His face flushes, and his eyes dart from my face to the bed. “Can we just stop—?”
“We’re stopped.Go.” I tug my quilt from beneath him.
The mattress shifts as he wobbles to his feet.
I pull the quilt over my shoulders and face the wall.
“Please don’t get mad at me because I asked a valid question,” he says to my back. “I want this so badly, but I also don’t want to hurt you.”
I stare at the wall’s bumpy nothingness. Better than looking at him. Safer. But then the wall becomes too much, and I squeeze my eyes shut.
He sighs again. Then his soft footsteps move toward the door but don’t leave the room. Undecided.
I make the decision for both of us and let exhaustion pull me back into its cloud. And soon, it doesn’t matter if he’s standing there or not—I’m drifting off to sleep, and I don’t plan to open my eyes again until the new day. Nor do I plan to think about his valid question. Now Kai wants what she wants. She offered, he declined, and that’s that.
Neither Kai—Before or Now—begs.
My dream is not of silver-gray mountains or rancid seas or cries of despair.
Olivia is the only person in this dream.
I’m looking out the window beside my bed, and I see her hidden in the oleander bushes, pulling on my leather breeches and then swirling my cape around her shoulders. She’s already wearing my boots, and beneath my too-big tunic, she wears my bandeau.
Our eyes lock.
She glides her tongue over her sharp white teeth and backs deeper into the oleander. Before she completely disappears, I glimpse something shining on her neck.
My amulet.
I blink—she’s gone. Nothing there except crabapple trees and ferns.
I bolt up in bed, my head spinning. Panic rattles my achy bones.
That dream—it felt soreal. But there’s no way it could be real. Right? Not after I warned her.
I’m dreaming. Yeah.
Right before we left the cottage, she claimed that my clothes needed additional washing because they were filthy. No, I’ll take over and wash them again, even if that means wheeling my way to the creek myself.
