“Stop!”
“I am so fucking tired!” he shouted, his voice cracking down the center. “This life is hard all the time. It never lets up. It just stretches on for fucking ever. But you? You’re not.”
“I am not tired?” I ground out, two seconds from hucking the goddamn phone at the wall.
“Not like me. You still have light, and the only thing Seattle is going to do is beat it out of you. First from your eyes, then from your chest until nothing remains but me.”
“Thay.”
“Please.” Something wet slid down his cheek, and I nearly drowned.
“You just said you wanted me to tell Finn that I am yours!” I cried.
“That is because I can’t leave you. It is physically impossible. But you’ve already left. And that’s a good thing.”
“You’re being a martyr.”
“Come on.” He rubbed at his face, all of his rules puddling between us. “It’s why you couldn’t say the words to Finn. You needed a window, and deep down, you know the second you’re officially mine, that goes away.”
“I didn’t respond because I was afraid you would reject me!”
“To save you,” he snapped. “But things got so fucked up when you left, I don’t even think I can do that anymore.”
“What is this?” I fell to the floor, staring at him in a panic, every bit of food I hadn’t eaten today surging upward. “Holy shit, Thay. Are you… breaking up with me?”
“Daphne, no!” He took a breath, swallowing hard before finding the words to speak. “I did not cross that line with you before because, out of all the things I had to become so we could survive, I never wanted to be your monster. Or your reason why.”
“Thay, you were never my monster.”
“That’s because I chose not to keep you.” His voice tumbled off the side of a cliff and into the icy water below. “So what I am saying is, you shouldn’t choose Wolfe or me. You should stay in the light, pay taxes, live a full life far, the hell away from Seattle and everything that keeps you here.” My chest swelled. “But ifyou will not do that, andonce again, you should, I’m removing the line.”
There is a liminal space between breathing and death, where nothing floats or stays… just becomes warm and endless. My lids fell slowly, brushing my eyes with the softest touch before I realized what he’d said.
“But that doesn’t mean you have to cross it,” he added, trying to read my face. “See if Maine fits, Daphne. Make an actual choice. And if I’m one you can live with, I am yours.”
Mine.
What did that feel like? What did that even mean?
He had always been mine.Wouldalways be mine.
The universe jumped down my throat, and nothing moved, everything swirling overhead in brief bursts of color. I still hadn’t uttered a single word when his voice cut through the mist one last time.
“I’ve got to get some rest. But Nathem will have his phone if I don’t answer mine, okay.”
“Thay?” I said before he hung up.
“Yeah, Daph.”
“Things are bad over there, aren’t they?”
“They’re not good,” he whispered. “But we’re handling it.”
“I wish you were here,” I breathed, keeping him with me just a little longer.
Thay pulled off his shirt and collapsed onto his pillow, setting the phone beside his face.
“Want to know whatIwish?” He asked, his perfect lips folding under. “I wish I could touch you,” he muttered before closing his eyes, and I wondered what part of me he was picturing.