“I’m already about a dozen opinions ahead of you,” he said dryly. “And the only kind of treatments available to me aren’t anything I’m interested in. It would be like putting a bandaid on a severed leg. I’d rather spend my final days enjoying life instead of horizontal in bed tossing my cookies into a bucket every few hours.” His mouth pulled up on one side. “Although if you wanted to accompany me with the whole horizontal in bed thing, I wouldn’t object.”
I reached for a pillow and grazed it against his face. “I’d be needing that bucket, then.”
“If I didn’t know you better, that might have actually hurt my feelings, Bryn,” he said, looking at me a bit too intently. He reached for the collar of my shirt and before I could pull away, he slid the chain out until the sapphire pendent fell heavy over my shirt, warm from my skin. The symbol of William’s promise he’d hung around my neck until the day he could replace it with a ring—a day that would never come. Paul looked into my eyes for an explanation and found his answer when my eyes fell. He nodded. “Even if I wasn’t dying, I already know I don’t stand a chance with you. He messed you up good and you’re still in love with that loser.”
“Please, Paul,” I said, choking around the words. “I don’t want to talk—”
“I don’t want to talk about him either, but I just needed to confirm where I stand with you. And from that look on your face, I can see I nailed it right on the head.” He squeezed my hand before pulling his back. “But don’t expect me to give up on you. I’m going to keep trying to my dying day,” he said, chuckling humorlessly.
I cleared my throat and turned towards the door. “Why don’t you get some rest? It’s been an eventful morning for both of us.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I need some air. Clear my head,” I said, pulling the door closed behind me. “I’ll be here when you wake up, okay? We’ll get through this together.”
“Until my dying day?” he said, already sounding asleep.
“You’re not going to die,” I vowed, pacing down the hall. “Not if I have anything to do with it.”
I’d been wandering through the woods for a couple hours now; the fresh air not doing the job of clearing my mind I hoped it would have. It still felt thick as putty with contemplation. I kicked a pebble, sailing it through the woods. A yelp followed immediately after.
“Geesh, like I said before, deadly throwing—or kicking—machine.”
Even through the cushion of the heavily wooded area, that voice was unmistakable. “Patrick?” I hollered. “Where are you? I swear I didn’t mean to hit you. I didn’t think anyone was around for miles.” I burst into a jog in the direction I’d heard his voice.
“Sure, sure,” he answered back, just as I broke through a wall of trees and found him leaning against a building, rubbing his head. “I’d hate to see how much bigger that rock would have been if you did know I was out here.”
I came to a pause, eyeing the building that seemed to have materialized out of thin air. It was a near replica of William’s house, only smaller. “What’s that?”
Patrick crossed his arms, a sneer targeted my way. “My hopeless romantic of a brother built it decades ago thinking this girl he used to dream about would one day like to spend some time here with him and that she might like having an indoor garden when they were buried in ten feet of snow. Can you imagine someone caring about another person so much?”
I swallowed hard, taking a step forward. “Can I see inside?”
“That’s a no,” he said instantly, sliding over so his body was blocking the entry. “Actually, that’s a hell no.”
I wasn’t going to push the topic, despite wanting to push open the door so bad it hurt. I could always come back later if I wanted to taste the bitterness of what life could have been with William. “What are you doing out here?”
He pushed off the wall. “It certainly isn’t to shoot the breeze with you. It seems I drew the short straw when it came to completing your training. Lucky me.”
I ignored his over-exaggerated lack of enthusiasm. “So how’s this going to work? How many weeks of strength training do I have left?” I asked, eyeing him. “Since I know you’re counting down the days.”
“Not soon enough,” he said, staring me straight in the eyes. “Since you’re pretty much a walking hydrogen bomb, consider yourself graduated with honors from strength training. You’ve made it deadly obvious you can defend yourself.”
I couldn’t look at the smirk on his face any longer. The trees suddenly became fascinating.
“I’m here to attempt to tame the beast within you—I’m here to fulfill your talent training,” he said, giving me a half-smile. “Again, lucky me.”
“So what, you’re a talent instructor, too?” I asked, shifting my eyes back at him to only shift them away again from the pointed glare he had aimed at me.
“No,” he said dryly. “But since I’m the only Teleporter in our Alliance, I got stuck with it.”
I crossed my arms, feeling the angry steam rolling from him. “I don’t know which of us is going to enjoy this less.”
“That’s easy—you will,” he answered instantly. “If you thought strength training was hard—when I took it easy on you since my brother was bewitched by you—you’ll discover a new definition of hard tomorrow,” he said, unbuttoning his jacket purposefully. A scent entered my senses that was as inescapable as it was familiar.
“That’s William’s jacket,” I whispered before I could catch myself. I didn’t want Patrick to be a witness to any of my weaknesses, especially one he wasn’t supposed to know about.
“It was.” Patrick shrugged. “He passed it onto me, though. He said it reminded him of this one girl that threw his heart in a blender and hit puree.”
I took a few steps back, despite wanting to lunge forward nose-first into Patrick’s outerwear. I still craved William—I always would—any piece of him, and this smallest bit had given me a fix . . . but I was desperate for more.
“How is he?” I asked, knowing Patrick’s reply would probably be two worded and profane.
Patrick paused, something out-of-character for him. “Really great, actually,” he said, also suddenly enthralled with the nature surrounding us. “He met someone, too. Someone the Council approves of and someone who won’t kill him if he accidently touches her.”
My world was already shattered, so why did it feel like it was breaking all over again? I’d known there would be someone else for him one day. I just hoped I’d never have to hear about her when that day came—nor how much the Council approved of her.
“See? Happy endings for everyone,” Patrick said, clasping his hands together. “You got cowboy and William’s got a girl who won’t leave him for some lame-brain with a coward’s heart.”
I bit my tongue, wanting to argue back in the worst way, but I’d come so far already. I couldn’t admit to Patrick why I’d left—not now that William had found someone to move on with. My plan was working—I should be happy. He’d found someone he could love again and I was far enough away I couldn’t kill him.
However, happiness and I had parted ways two continents and an ocean back.
“Bryn!” a strained voice called from a way’s off.
“Speak of the devil,” Patrick said, turning into the forest. “And he’ll appear.”
“When do we start?” I yelled at the fast retreating Patrick, trying to push aside the dark images swirling in my mind. I wasn’t successful.
“Tomorrow morning, nice and early, before cowboy gets up. I’m really looking forward to it.” And he was gone, evaporating into the depths of the forest, taking the coveted jacket and scent with him. Leaving a junkie shivering with her withdrawals.
“Bryn!” Paul’s voice was closer. “Where the heck are you?”
I couldn’t stand going back to the home where William would bring another woman. Not right now. And I couldn’t face the man waiting for me, in more ways than one, while he also waited for his death.
Instead, I huddled into a ball on the mossy earth, trying not to think William’s name or of his face or the way he absently combed his fingers through his hair or of the way his hand pressed against my back as he led me into a room. At the moment, I didn’t want anything more than to forget about him, but there was also nothing more impossible. The world dangled him on a string in front of me, just out of reach, reminding me what I’d lost.
As if a consolation prize for losing the race of love, the skies hailed down a sheet of rain, lulling me into a tragic sort of calm until I found sleep.
Although he was waiting for me there, too.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
BECAUSE EVERYTHING
“Keep them shut!” I commanded for the fifth time in thirty seconds time.
“Alright, alright,” Paul said, trying to diffuse me with his hands. “Bossy, much?”
“Only with you,” I grumbled, steering him down the hall.
I pulled open the front door and a rush of air pummeled us. Paul wavered, steeling himself against the doorframe. So maybe my hair-brained scheme wasn’t such a great idea if he was losing a battle against fast-moving air. Paul should have been in bed, resting in a hospital, but me—the witless wonder—decided an extreme sport was today’s best course of treatment for terminal cancer.
“I didn’t think the Alps were prone to hurricanes!” Paul hollered through the stifling noise.
“Okay, open your eyes now,” I ordered, sliding the cyclone of hair out of my face.
His eyes flashed open as I motioned towards the monster machine in front of us. “Your chariot awaits.”
His eyes amplified. “What is a helicopter doing in the front yard?” He blinked a few times, as if trying to ascertain reality. It did look more like something you’d see on the big screen as opposed to real life.
“Since we are in the Alps and you’ve been dying to go boarding since we arrived . . .” I began, realizing, as I said it, how ridiculous this was “I figured if we were going to do it, we might as well do it up right.”
When I’d found the tri-fold brochure tucked into one of William’s med books last week, I hadn’t even stopped to think if it was a good idea. I only saw an opportunity to do something for Paul that was a dream of his.
I wanted to shove every desire, dream, and wish into his life before he ran out of it, but it clearly didn’t enter my mind until now—when he looked more frail than ever—that if the cancer didn’t take him first, this could.
“Maybe this was a bad idea,” I said, tugging Paul’s sleeve back into the house. I doubted the money was refundable, but the owner of the company had given me a great deal once I told him where I was staying. He didn’t offer a reason why and I didn’t look a gift horse in the mouth.