“Look at me, Sera. Please,” he added.

So finally I opened my eyes, and when I met his gaze, he slid into me, slowly, smoothly, and I couldn’t breathe again until I had all of him. And I was terrified by how much I didn’t want to let him go.

He lingered there, my legs locked around him, staring into my eyes, and I discovered that now that I was looking, I couldn’t turn away from him. Not even when he began to move inside me, and my hips rose to meet him over and over. I couldn’t look away until he leaned close to whisper in my ear.

“I promise he will pay, Sera. He will pay with every drop of his blood, and with his very last breath.”

I clung to him, as fresh tears rolled down my cheeks and soaked into his pillow. Then I pushed it all away again—the despair, the anger—and lived in that moment with Kris. Our moment, in which nothing else existed. Nothing but him, and me, and the delicious friction building between us, burning hotter with each second, until I couldn’t breathe, and couldn’t think, and couldn’t hold back for another second.

I gasped as that heat spilled over in wave after wave of pleasure, and Kris groaned when his release caught up with mine. And for a moment afterward, neither of us moved. I didn’t want to let him go, and he seemed in no hurry to be freed.

Then he kissed the corner of my jaw and his weight and warmth disappeared. I sat up, suddenly sure I’d see him pulling on his clothes to leave the room, but instead he settled onto the mattress next to me. “Don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere.” Kris pulled the sheet up to cover us both, then slid his arm beneath my pillow, and we lay there listening to each other breathe, while the rest of the world carried on without us.

It was the most peaceful moment I could remember since the night my family died. And I never wanted it to end.

Nineteen

Kris

She was the most beautiful thing I’d ever touched, and the saddest person I’d ever met, and I didn’t want to let her go. I couldn’t.

Afterward, I lay on my side next to her, one hand splayed across her stomach, trying not to think about her scar and what it meant. What he’d taken from her. What no one would ever be able to give her again.

I hated how helpless—how useless—that scar made me feel. I was supposed to prevent that. I was meant to save Sera’s baby. Her future. I was meant to spare her the grief she was still mired in, and maybe, if I’d actually done that, we would have come together in a moment of triumph, instead of shared grief.

“Can I ask you a personal question?” I stared down at her profile, no more able to look away from her than I was able to stop touching her.

She turned to look at me, and her eyes were damp. “Only if I get to ask one in return.”

“You can ask, even if you don’t want to answer my question. And that’s okay, if you don’t want to. I don’t have any right to ask.”

“Just say it.” A hint of a smile rode the corners of her mouth, but it was forced. It didn’t match the sadness in her eyes. “You’re making it worse, with the buildup.”

I shouldn’t ask. It was none of my business. But I had to know, for purely selfish reasons.

“Who is he?” My thumb twitched over her scar on the last word, surely an unconscious, nervous movement.

Sera frowned, and I saw the moment her confusion cleared. She’d thought I was asking about the killer. Or maybe about the child he’d taken from her. “My baby’s father?” she whispered, and all hints of that earlier smile were gone.

“Yeah. But you don’t have to...”

“His name is Ben. But he doesn’t matter. Really,” she said when I started to object. Of course he mattered. He’d lost a child, too. “He didn’t want the baby. He didn’t want me. We weren’t involved, beyond that one time. I don’t even know how to get in touch with him anymore, so maybe this was meant to be.”

“No,” I said, and she looked so relieved I wanted to kiss her. “This wasn’t meant to be.” I was meant to stop it. I’d failed Sera before I’d even met her.

“My turn,” she said, and I let her change the subject because we both needed it. “What was it like, being with Noelle? With a Seer?”

“You really want to know?”

She nodded. “Okay. Um... Going out with Noelle was like going out with Cassandra. The Cassandra.”

“From Greek mythology?”

“Yeah. The one who could see the future, but couldn’t change it.” Only what Noelle and I did together couldn’t really be called dating. There were no true meals, no movies and no Valentines. We stole moments from the real world, and we stole them shamelessly. We tried to pause time and live in a single second forever. In a heartbeat. In a glance. In that quick breath between desperate kisses. And every single one of those stolen moments happened between one o’clock and three o’clock in the morning. In my bed.

“But it wasn’t all sex,” I said, and Sera almost looked relieved. “Kori thinks it was, but Elle and I also talked.” More accurately, we’d whispered. We’d laughed. We’d teased. And one time, Noelle had cried. “Then, eventually, inevitably, she fell asleep. And that’s when things got weird. Every single time.”

“She started talking in her sleep?”

“Yeah. And now that I can look back on it with a little perspective—I’m wiser now, in case you didn’t know—I think that may have been the point for her all along.”