"Suppressants," he whispers. "We’ll survive this, Bay. I’m not giving you up, we’ll take suppressants."
I reach out wanting to take his hand, wanting that gesture of connection.
But the moment our skin touches, we both experience something like an epileptic shock.
We’re literally thrown apart!
We tremble like we’ve been electrocuted.
"What the hell," I groan, pulling myself off the floor where I landed. Alex fell too, but in disbelief he reaches out again, and I reach out again.
But I refuse to give up. This time I go even further and pull my T-shirt off. Alex seems to understand. He pulls his T-shirt off as well, his face tense. We need to find out if it’s about skin-to-skin contact. When our clothes hit the floor, I throw myself toward him and pull him into my arms, our bodies pressing together.
I immediately regret it.
Pain shoots through my body, even more horrible, intense, and blinding. It throws me back nearly six feet, as if his skin is charged with a million electric needles. When it was just his hand and we were still clothed, it felt like bee stings piercing into our palms, but now it’s like a hornet’s nest pressed against our chests…
"Oh my Fate, oh my Fate," I whisper because I understand that suppressants won’t help us.
It's too much.
Too much…
Then… I pass out. Shock and pain swallow me whole.
When I regain consciousness I’m still lying on the floor beside Alex.
It’s already dim, but he’s awake, and that horrible smell still hangs in the air around me.
Alex is lying on his back, staring at the ceiling.
His phone lies beside him, the screen glowing faintly in the half-light.
He sees my eyes open and glances at me. His eyes are swollen and red.
"I read about cases like ours," he says in a voice I hardly recognize, like it’s coming from a deep grave.
"It’s very rare and described in medical literature as Reversed True Mates. Extreme incompatibility cases, you could say the far end of the spectrum. As if the genetic clock turned one click too far."
Reversed True Mate. The fuck! The highest level of incompatibility?
I don’t say it out loud. I can’t.
My mind is blank, a black void opening wider and wider with every word he speaks, hungry, ready to swallow and tear me apart.
"For people like us there is no chance to have children, and no chance to touch each other with bare skin, even with suppressants. Our touch will hurt us. According to these articles we’ll start to hate each other."
I’m still silent, my throat feels caught in an iron ring.
It feels like the floor beneath me is collapsing.
I’m falling into the void, falling into darkness.
Everything Alex gave me for four years, everything that kept me afloat, his energy, his sweetness, his perfection, it is all being taken from me now, and I keep falling, lower and lower,knowing that at the bottom there is only being shattered into nothingness.
"There is no chance for us, Bay… no chance," he says.
"Stop. Don’t say that, there has to be some chance."
