She slips into my arms, and I cradle the back of her head. “I will work for the rest of my life to never let you down again. I won’t make the same mistake twice and lose you.”
“You won’t,” she says, muffled in my shoulder. “You won’t lose me.”
There it sits, the one thing that we know isn’t true. Iwilllose her, and when it happens, it will destroy me. But for now I’m going to live every moment with Blair to the fullest and not take a second for granted.
Because a life without her is no life at all. I know that now. I knew it then, too. That’s why I spent the last ten years immersing myself in work and never seriously dating, because no one could compare to her.
They never have and they never will.
Like I said, we’ve wasted so much time. I don’t want to waste another moment.
The air shifts. A breeze picks up, and cherry blossoms appear out of nowhere, circling us in a tornado of light pink petals.
“What is this?” she asks.
“Magic,” I whisper. “Or Rebecca.”
She laughs and pulls back, smiling at me from ear to ear, her brown eyes shining. “Devlin?”
“Yes?”
She tugs on my shirt flirtatiously. “Take me to bed, or lose me forever.”
It’s a line fromTop Gun, a movie I know well.
I kiss her. “With pleasure.”
She walks off and for a moment I watch her, admiring this beautiful woman. A second later a tingle works its way up my spine, crawling to the top of my head. My fingers pulse with energy.
Oh shit.
“Blair—”
She’s taken a couple of steps into the street and when she turns around, our gazes lock. There’s a split second of recognition. The heavy smell of ozone, the way the light’s pooling around her, the feeling that we’ve been here before.
Because we have.
I reach out my hand. One burst of magic and she’ll be out of the way, safe.
But before I’m able to release my power, something slams into my head. Light explodes in my eyes, and I’m knocked to the ground.
I can only watch in horror as headlights appear out of nowhere, a truck barreling down the road, and the next thing I know, she’s gone.
36
I’m trapped in darkness. It’s a thick sludge that won’t release its hold on me.
My mind races to put pieces together. I was with Devlin after the ball. We were outside, walking back to his house. He’d just proposed. It was the best and worst night of my life, what with Storm making a scene and Nana revealing herself.
I had just walked in front of Devlin, into the road, and turned around when he said my name.
It felt like déjà vu. The halo of light around him, the expression on his face—his lips parted, his eyes brimming with concern—it was all familiar.
Then it hit me. I was in the vision, standing right in the middle of a future that we had both seen, and I think we realized it at the same time. There was a split second of recognition on his face, a frantic worry, and then he reached for me.
And here I am, trapped in darkness. Unable to get out.
Where am I? Is this heaven? Worse, is this hell?
