“That doesn’t make me immortal!”
“You see those things too,” he interjected as he fell to one knee before me, desperation in his tone. “Those moments when you have flashes of memories that feel like another lifetime before. Do you… do you remember when you said you thought your soul was reaching out for mine?”
Of course, I remembered. I’d felt ridiculous saying it, but it had felt right.
“Gavin…”
“It’s because it’s true. It doesn’t matter how long we’re apart or how many lifetimes pass. We will always find each other.”
I rose to my feet, pulling out of his grasp. My entire body burned with the story, with how he thought it was true.
“This is ridiculous,” I managed. “Do you realize how ridiculous this all sounds?”
He pulled me by the wrist back into him, his hand landing on my cheek. “But you feel it,” he said. “As crazy as it sounds, you know it’s true.”
“Then why don’t I remember?” I asked, ready to burst into tears at the overwhelming feelings coursing through my bones.
“You were erased from memory,” he said. “You were erased from the myths, from my memory, from our friends’ memories after… to protect me after someone stole you from me.”
“What do you mean someone stole me? What, like kidnapped?” I asked.
His jaw was taut, face red with sorrow. “Yes.”
“But how? If I am immortal, what have I been doing these last centuries? Why now? How do I have memories of childhood, a family—“
“The same way that you were erased,” he said.
I wanted to argue and tell him he was wrong. I wanted to tell him my family wasn’t just a mirage, that I had been born to my mother and father, and that they were my blood.
And yet…
The way random strangers had begun smiling at me—the pilot, the baker, Hades, Persephone, and even Aphrodite. They allknewme.
Maybe…
God, I wanted to hide in a hole.
He reached for me, intending to pull me into his grasp, but I stepped out of his arms. I didn’t know what to think or how to respond. It wasso much. To be someone I didn’t remember, who—as far as history went—never existed.
“Chloe?”
But I held up my hands, tears falling down my face now. “I need some time,” I managed. “Please. Just… just give me a few minutes.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN - GAVIN
I WAS SUCH a fucking idiot.
Gods, the look on her face… the familiarity and then the absolute terror.
I watched her practically run back to the condo, and I did nothing. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t blink. My body was void of any feeling except fear. I wouldn’t have blamed her if she had run. It was so much to take in—almost too much. To be told you were a lost goddess, that you were married, theactualsoulmate to the person you’d fallen in love with.
It would send any person running for the hills.
I stayed on the roof until I couldn’t take it any longer. I knew she needed that space, knew that she might even need days to come to terms with it.
If she even came to terms with it at all.
I fully expected her to pack up her things and leave me.
