The Shadows

“And I will! Fine! I’ll even see Mary—I’ll wear a fucking sign around my chest that reads, ‘Processing Grief,’ for fuck’s sake. Happy? Now can we fucking stop talking about this.”

As he barked at her, she closed her eyes in exhaustion. “Trez—”

“You say you can’t imagine leaving me, right? Well, I can’t even think about it. I don’t think about—I refuse to even construct in my mind”—he jabbed his forefinger into his head—“a reality where you’re not here. So not only can I not project what the fuck I’m going to feel like, but I sure as hell can’t swear to a hypothetical.”

“You’d better start thinking about it,” she said roughly. “You’d better begin to prepare. I’m telling you right now that the endgame is coming.”

He seemed to deflate in front of her, even as he stayed his same height and weight. “Don’t talk like that.”

“And I want you to find another female, sometime far off in the future. I want you to . . .” At this, her voice cracked from a pain so great she could have sworn it was going to leave a bloodstain in the center of her shirt. “I don’t want you to spend another nine hundred years sleeping alone.”

As she fell silent, the devastation in him was so great, he stumbled backward and all but fell into the chaise longue.

“I thought you loved me,” he said in a voice that didn’t sound like his.

“I do. With all my—”

He rubbed his sternum. “Then what’s this all about. Why do you want me to go and find some other female—”

“Trez, listen to me.” But he was gone, having retreated to somewhere in his head that she couldn’t reach. “Trez, I do love you, and that’s the point—”

“Then why would you ever tell me you want me to be with anyone but you?” His eyes were crushed as they swung around to her. “Why would you want that? Ever? It’s a violation of everything I thought we felt for each other.”

“Trez—”

“I’ve bonded with you. You know this. Why would you ever tell a bonded male that he has to go out and have sex with someone else?”

“You’re missing the point.”

Shit, it wasn’t supposed to go like this. He was supposed to give her his vow—and take her permission to heart so that, a million years from now, when he’d moved on from her and everything they’d meant to each other wasn’t so raw, he wouldn’t feel guilty about finding someone else to be happy with.

It was the right thing for her to do.

“Maybe you should just go,” he said in a dull voice.

“What?”

He brushed at his eyes. “Just leave. Just get out of here.” He nodded at the door. “I was prepared to go through absolutely anything with you, but not this. You don’t want my love, that’s fine. I get it. This has been a crazy couple of nights for you, and high emotion has a way of contaminating everything and making things seem more important than they really are. But you can’t be here with me anymore.”

She shook her head, like maybe that would help make his words make sense. “What are you talking about.”

“I don’t blame you. Doc Jane told you I saved your life, so there’s a lot of gratitude you must be feeling—that can be confused for love. I get it—”

“Wait, what—I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

“But I can’t be around you. You say you don’t want me to destroy myself? Fine, then a good place to start is with you leaving now.”

A weird flickering panic made her nape tighten up. “Trez, you haven’t listened to what I’ve been saying. You’re taking this in a completely different direction—a wrong one. I love you—”

“Don’t say that,” he snapped at her. “Don’t you say that to me—”

“I’ll say anything I like,” she snapped back. “It’s your hearing that I’d be worried about if I were you.”

“Oh, my ears are working fine, sweetheart. I just had the female I love and worship more than anything in the entire world tell me she wants me to go out and fuck someone else. Maybe before you die, you should write Hallmark and suggest that shit for a Valentine’s Day card, it’s really fucking romantic.”

Now she was the one springing to her feet. “I don’t want that! I don’t want any of this!” Her voice rose to a hysterical level, but she couldn’t help it. “Do you think I’m happy about saying these things, thinking these things! I have God only knows how many nights left and I’ve wasted this one sitting on that fucking chair right there staring at some bullshit book I haven’t been reading, imagining you hanging yourself in a bathroom after I die! Or getting drunk and running your car into a tree! Or going on another fucking spree that lasts not a decade but a century!”

She circled a finger next to her head. “These thoughts—I don’t want them! You think I want to tell you this? Jesus Christ, Trez, I love you! I don’t want you to ever be with another female, like ever! I want you to sit in a corner and mourn me until you die—I don’t want you to see the sun or the moon, or enjoy another meal, or have a good day’s sleep! I want to haunt you for the rest of your life, until everywhere you go and anyone you talk to, all you can see is the ghost of me—because then I know you won’t forget me!”