Page 33 of Better in Black
“Was it worth it?” you said, almost too softly for me to hear. “Everything we lost?”
It was the closest you ever got to saying your son’s name.
“I don’t know what it would mean to be worth that,” I said. “But I know we did what was right.”
And then—
Why, Jocelyn? Why, when you knew what you knew, when you’d planned what you planned? Was it desire or pity? Was it simply goodbye? If you knew how often I’ve asked myself. If you knew how often I sink into the memory, revisiting each moment, each touch.
“I know it was right,” I said.
And then you leaned in.
And then you kissed me.
—
Sometimes I dream myself back there. Your lips against mine. The kiss. Soft at first, tentative, like a question. Then hungry. Desperate. An answer. And then we’re both laughing, giddy with it; we’re stumbling across the tiny room, entangled, in need, and you fling yourself against me and we fall together into the bed and I reach for you—
There’s always a moment, caught between sleep and waking, when I’m surprised to find myself alone.
—
We made love. That first, that only time. I have never told anyone. I wonder if you ever did. Somehow, I doubt it.
Somehow, that night was made up of hours that had been cutout of time. We forgot everything but each other. We laid aside our pain and drowned in each other: in the rush of pleasure, desire, flesh, and heat. In my arms braced over you, your hands on my back. You kissed my shoulder where the wolf’s bite had left its scar.
I wanted to please you more than I had ever wanted anything. I wanted to make you cry out with it, and when you did, you sounded almost surprised, as if you had not known or imagined what your body could give you. You gasped and fell back against the pillows with your eyes wide, and then you pulled me hard against you and wrapped your legs and arms around me and whisperedplease, Lucian, please,and as I lost control, I felt my soul leave my body and join with yours.
For the first time, I was whole.
—
It didn’t last, of course. We were like mortals who stumbled into Faerie, into some enchanted land where everything is different, but return to find that nothing has changed.
—
When I woke up in the morning, the cheap hotel blanket tangled around me, I turned instinctively toward you, expecting to find you asleep beside me.
Instead, you were sitting on the edge of the bed, wearing a flowered dress you’d bought in the Marché Vernaison. Black sandals on your feet, your hands folded demurely in your lap.
“Oh, Lucian,” you said, and you sounded sad, so very sad.
I sat up, half-blind with terror. I reached for your hand. “It’s all right. It was too much, too fast. I understand.” I tried to smile, though it felt like a lie. “It’s fine. We don’t even have to talk about it.” I was talking quickly, to speed us past the moment, into an after whereeverything could be as it was. “Maybe once things have calmed down, when we’re back home—”
“I’m not going home,” you said. “Not ever.”
That’s when you told me you were leaving. You’d used the money from the amulet to buy a plane ticket—ticket, singular.Youwere leaving, singular. You were never going back to Idris, you were never going back to the Shadow World. You were leaving your life behind, forever. And you were leaving me. When I said that was just your grief speaking, that it would pass, you took a very deep breath, white-faced, and said:
“Lucian. I’m pregnant.”
It’s shameful to admit now, but when you said that…a part of me died. The part of myself that had imagined we could erase the past. Move forward as if there’d been no Valentine, no Circle, no Uprising, no death, only the two of us.
I found words, somehow. “Did Valentine know?”
You shook your head. “I don’t think so. But it doesn’t matter.”
I understood. You were having Valentine’s baby, which meant it would never end. If he was alive, he would come for you. If he was dead, and I was so sure—I wanted so badly to be sure—that he was dead, his followers, the Chosen Ones, would come for you, and for your child.Hischild. I knew you would never let it happen, not again. And neither would I.
