Chapter 169
Sebastian
I could feel her stiffen against me, could see the exact moment my words registered. Shit. I'd meant to lead up to this more carefully, not just blurt it out in the afterglow.
"Sebastian," she said slowly, sitting up despite the cramped space. "What do you mean, 'trying to make it easier by ending it'?"
I sat up too, reaching for her but she pulled back. "Lirael, I—"
"Were you planning to break up with me?" Her voice had gone very quiet, which was somehow worse than if she'd been yelling. "Was this whole thing—the cemetery, the overlook, the sex—was it all some kind of goodbye?"
"Not exactly," I said, which was the wrong thing to say based on the way her eyes flashed.
"Not exactly? What the hell does that mean?"
"It means—" I ran a hand through my wet hair, trying to find the right words. "It means I was going to suggest we break up. That I was going to try to convince you that it would be better for you if we ended things now, before you had to watch me deteriorate."
"You bastard," she said, and now she was yelling. "You absolute bastard. You brought me up here, told me you loved me, fucked me in a thunderstorm, and you were planning to break up with me?"
"I was trying to protect you—"
"By breaking my heart?" She was scrambling for her clothes now, yanking her shirt on inside-out. "By making unilateral decisions about what's best for me without even asking? That's not protection, Sebastian. That's cowardice."
"You're right," I said, catching her hands before she could reach for her jeans. "You're absolutely right. It was cowardice. I was terrified of watching you watch me die, terrified of becoming something you'd hate, and I thought the kindest thing I could do was push you away before it got that bad."
"And now?" She was still angry, but she'd stopped trying to get dressed.
"Now I realize that trying to protect you from pain by causing you pain is the stupidest fucking logic I've ever come up with." I pulled her closer, relieved when she didn't resist. "Now I realize that you're right—we face this together, or we don't face it at all."
She stared at me for a long moment, and I could see her working through it, weighing my words against my actions. "If you ever try to break up with me again," she said finally, "I'm going to use my magic to tie you to the bed until you come to your senses."
"Noted," I said, feeling something in my chest unclench. "No more dramatic break-up speeches in thunderstorms."
"Or anywhere else," she added. "No more deciding what's best for me without asking. We're partners, remember?"
"Partners," I agreed. "Which means I should probably tell you the rest of what I was going to say."
She tensed again. "There's more?"
"I was going to tell you that I love you," I said. "That choosing you was the best decision I ever made. That even if I only have three days left, I want to spend them with you. And then I was going to break up with you because I'm an idiot who thought that would somehow make it hurt less."
"It wouldn't have," she said quietly.
"I know that now." I cupped her face in my hands, making her look at me. "I know that pushing you away wouldn't protect you from grief. It would just mean we'd both be miserable and alone for whatever time we have left. And I don't want that. I don't want to face this alone."
"Good," she said, and I could see tears mixing with the rain on her face. "Because I'm not letting you. We're going to figure this out, we're going to find a treatment, and you're going to live long enough to have all those conversations about boundaries and communication that you promised me."
"And if we can't?" I asked, because I needed to know she understood what she was signing up for. "If there's no treatment, no cure, no miracle?"
"Then we'll have had this," she said, gesturing at the fogged windows, our half-dressed state, the intimacy of the moment. "We'll have had every moment we could steal, every conversation, every argument, every time you tried to do something noble and stupid and I talked you out of it. And that will have to be enough."
I kissed her then, tasting salt and rain and stubborn hope. "I love you," I said against her mouth. "And I'm sorry I almost fucked this up by trying to be noble."
"I love you too," she said. "And you're forgiven. But Sebastian?"
"Yeah?"
"Next time you want to have an important conversation, maybe do it before the sex? This whole 'emotional revelation in the afterglow' thing is really bad timing."
I laughed despite everything, pulling her close. "Deal. Though in my defense, I did try to tell you before. You're the one who told me to stop talking and show you."
"Fair point," she conceded, settling against my chest. "But the offer stands—try to break up with me again, and I'm using magic to restrain you."
"I'll keep that in mind," I said, pressing a kiss to the top of her head.
We stayed like that for a while, listening to the rain gradually slow and then stop, watching the sun break through the clouds. And when we finally got dressed and headed back to the estate, I felt lighter than I had in days.
Maybe she was right. Maybe love could be enough. Maybe together we could beat the entropy, survive my father's spite, build the future Derek never got to have.
Or maybe I'd die anyway, and she'd be left with nothing but grief and memories.
But looking at her face as she drove—because she'd insisted on driving since I was "clearly too emotionally compromised to operate a vehicle safely"—I found I didn't care about the maybe. I cared about the now. About this moment, this woman, this choice to fight instead of surrender.