Pain knifed through Tai’s chest, so sharp he fisted his hand to keep from grabbing his shirt.
Claire’s words, suddenly freed, rolled like a landslide down a mountain, gaining speed. “I know waiting until then seems like I was withholding something, and I guess I was, but this is just really big, Tai. Really big inside me and holds really big consequences, if I was ever identified or… But I also know you’ve told me equally big things about you. I should have just told you and not waited. I’m sorry.”
She’d missed half the problem. She still didn’t understand.
“If you’re mad, I get it,” she said. “Waiting wasn’t fair, especially because we don’t know how long it’ll be before you’re ready.”
“Claire,” he said, and the name he loved choked off at the back of his throat.
She took a step toward him. “Tai?”
“You set this…timeline…after I told you I can’t.”
“You can’t today, but you will.”
“I won’t!”
The words broke out of him in a sort of cry. All this time he’d believed her when she said he was enough. All this timeshehadn’t believedhim. She’d only been waiting for him to do what she wanted. Claire took a step toward him, but he put up a hand, palm toward her, and she stood still.
“You don’t crave. You don’t fight the prey drive. You don’t live in this body, Claire. You’ll never know, not fully, and I’m so glad. I’d never want this for someone I love. But I need—” Sudden emotion flooded in, and he covered his face as he worked to contain it. When he looked up, Claire hadn’t moved, stood statue-still. He said, “It’s hard, Claire, it’s so hard, and it hurts, and I need you to hear me when I say Ican’t, and it’s not because I’m not brave enough because bravery hasnothingto do with this.”
She turned away from him and shoved her fingers through her hair, and in the turning away, he knew before she spoke that he’d asked for too much. Claire’s voice broke with the same overflow of feeling that swamped his chest.
“I want you to stay, Tai. That’s all I want.”
“I will stay.” But his voice sounded flat now, because he knew. She didn’t believe him.
“You want us to be together for hundreds of yearswithoutthe covenant? Without any way to be sure?”
“I’m in love with you. I’ve given my word. Over and over again.”
Slowly she faced him. Her eyes held no sparks now, only a dull sheen. “Nobody’s word is enough for centuries.”
“Yours is to me.”
“That’s not fair.”
“It’s the truth.” Numbness spread over the stabbing in his chest, then outward until he couldn’t feel how deeply her words had sliced him. “But you still think I’ll break my word.”
“I don’t think you will. But when we’re bloodbound, I’ll be sure.”
“Then I’m not enough. Who I am, what I’ve let you see, what I’ve let even your friends see—none of it matters.”
“Tai, stop. Of course it matters. You matter. You’re all I want.”
“No.” The word sank deep into him, a barb he’d never be able to remove if he lived his full thousand years. “You want to eliminate uncertainty, eliminate the need for trust. You don’t want me; you want a vampire who can mark your neck with a guarantee.”
“What I want is foryouto be that vampire, Tai.”
“And I’m not.”
Claire drew a rough breath that left her voice rasping. “But I love you.”
Tai couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak. Couldn’t even blink. Loss was clamping down on his chest, and along with it came a wave of ice that coated him from head to toe.
She came to him, pressed her palms against his shirt, not knowing she touched the place where the iron band of fear and grief was crushing him. She looked up into his face with eyes that had gone charcoal-gray in acute distress of her own.
“I love you,” she said.
