“You don’t have sex with people who are only friends!”

“Ellie.” He sighed my name in that way of his that could calm me during any storm but this one.

“You told me it wasn’t what I thought! You lied to me!”

“I didn’t lie to you,” he said tiredly. “I never dated her. We were never anything more.”

“Well, you wanted something from her!” As soon as I said it, I was sickened by myself. I didn’t even know what I was saying anymore.

His expression darkened and his brow furrowed as anger boiled to the surface. “I didn’t want anything from her! It was a mistake!”

Tears were streaming down both sides of my face now, pooling in the corners of my mouth. I didn’t know how I’d gotten so upset so quickly. “So you broke it off with her? Just like you did with me?”

“I thought you were gone!” he repeated, his voice breaking. When he spoke again, his voice was lower, but he had little more control. “I was dead inside. I believed I’d lost you, the only thing that made my life worth something! You are all I knew, Ellie, and I’d died along with you. I never loved her, never loved anyone but you in all these centuries. You were gone and I gave up. When I found you again, barely a year afterward … I can’t describe to you what it felt like to see you again after believing with every last thread of my soul that you were gone forever. Seeing your smile brought me back to life and killed me again at the same time. I felt like I had to tell you, after all these centuries, how much you meant to me, how much I have always loved you, in case I lost you again and you never came back. In case I never got to say it to you at all.”

I was sobbing now, and at some point I had sat down on the sofa and hadn’t even realized it. I buried my face in my hands, tugging at my hair, desperate to rip the images of Will and Ava kissing, touching, out of my head forever. He sat tentatively next to me, but he didn’t reach to comfort me, didn’t murmur into my hair the way he often did when I was upset. He did nothing. When I pulled my hands away from my face and looked at him, he was watching me, his eyes dull and dark. It wasn’t like we were together then, or even now, and it wasn’t like he cheated on me. I didn’t have a claim to him, but I felt like I did, and knowing all that didn’t make it hurt any less. I couldn’t be mad at him or hate him, because I didn’t have a right to.

I stopped crying, wiped at my face with my hands, and climbed shakily to my feet. I faced him, looking down at him where he sat. He took my hand, his gaze lingering on it soberly, and I allowed him to pull me close. His touch was warm, unsteady, and gentle as he ran his fingers across my palm and wrist and then wrapped both his arms around my body. His palms opened on my lower back, and he tugged me toward him gently as he sat there, and he rested his face against my belly. He gave a small squeeze and kissed me there, his lips pressing to the sweater I wore. It took me a few moments to regain my composure and the strength to pick my hands up to touch his face, lift his chin, and smooth my fingers over his rough cheeks, his lips—and then he smiled beneath my fingertips, and my heart broke.

“I need you,” he said, and turned his face to kiss my palm.

Something collapsed in my chest and my lips trembled. “I need you, too.” I ran my fingers through the silk of his hair.

“Nothing has ever meant more to me than you,” he whispered. “You are all I know.”

“Don’t say that,” I said, shaking my head. “It’s not true.”

“I have never lied to you.”

I had to leave before I started crying again. I pulled away from him, and his hands slipped from around my waist and fell. “I’ve got to get back to school before lunch hour is over.”

“I know,” he said.

Without saying good-bye, I left Nathaniel’s house and drove back to school. The rest of the day went by in a blurred daze, and I made a point of avoiding meeting Kate, only texting her back to tell her that I had learned nothing at all.

11

I WROTE TWO PAPERS FOR SCHOOL THAT WEEK, AND by Thursday I needed some down time and to get out of my house. Will and I were still a little shaky after our fight-slash-discussion about his history with Ava. No one I knew would bother me at the library, and it sounded like the perfect escape. Snow began to fall, lightly enough that it would be safe to drive in the dark if I went slowly, but tomorrow I’d have to shovel the driveway for sure. Three hours before closing was the perfect amount of time for me to find a good book and curl up in one of the giant sofa chairs on the second floor.

After some searching through the stacks, I selected a book I’d first found on my mom’s shelf when I was in middle school. I remembered being sucked in by the romance, so I grabbed it off the shelf and padded up the creaky stairs to the second-floor lounge, where it was quieter. I settled into a squishy chair next to an end table and lamp and lost myself in the novel. I didn’t even notice the reaper in the room quietly suppressing his energy until he dipped his head over my shoulder and cast his shadow over the pages.

I jerked out of my seat to face him and dropped the book, startled by the sensation of the reaper’s energy crawling on my skin like feather-light spider legs. “Cadan!” I cried out in a hushed voice.

He wore a gentle smile edged with amusement. The warm light in the library made the gold color of his hair even richer. “That book must be pretty good. You didn’t even notice me until I was right next to you.”