Theo shakes his head. “I said the same thing when Aevum gave me the report. They insisted there was no mistake, but I wouldn’t believe them. I couldn’t. I made them check again.” His throat bobs. “They were right.”
The weight of Theo’s words sits like iron in Oliver’s chest, cold and unyielding, squeezing the air from his lungs. “And then you, what? Decided not to tell me?”
“I was going to tell you,” he assures him. “I always meant to. But you were young and I—”
“I am not fourteen years old anymore!” Oliver yells. “I haven’t been for a long time, in case you haven’t noticed.”
“I know. You’re right,” Theo agrees.
It doesn’t make Oliver feel any better. “What did the report say about you?”
Theo hesitates too long.
Jealousy bursts through Oliver. “Let me guess. A long and happy life?” He should be ashamed of himself. If anyone deserved that, it was Theo. But he is too angry and too hurt to care.
Theo meets his gaze. His eyes are red and shadowed by dark circles. “I would trade with you if I could. In a fucking heartbeat. You know that, right?”
Oliver does. Theo would give him anything. Everything. That only makes it worse. “Can you stop with the self-sacrificing bullshit?”
Theo flinches.Good.
“You don’t have to handle this all on your own. I think you should come home.”
But it stopped feeling like home to Oliver the night his parents walked out the door and never walked back through it. “I’m not a kid, Theo. I’m not your responsibility anymore.”
Theo glances at him. “You’re still my brother.”
Tears prick behind Oliver’s eyes, and he looks quickly away. There was a time when he would have given anything to hear Theo say those words. But it is too late for that now, in every way imaginable.
“You should have told me sooner.” While there was still time for it to make a difference, to do something other than haunt him like the ghost of the life he could have had, of everything he should have done differently.
He could have traveled instead of wasting six years on a degree he’ll never use. Six fucking years. A quarter of his life. That’s what Zoë always says, isn’t it? He would have spent more time with his friends, less time working. Risked more. Made fewer excuses.
“I know,” Theo says. “I couldn’t do it. I thought something could change it. That if I told you, it would make it real.” But it is real, whether Theo wants it to be or not.
“You’re a fucking coward.” Oliver pours all of his anger and resentment and helpless, hopeless fear into the accusation.
Theo’s shoulders slump. “I know.”
“You should leave,” Oliver says, suddenly tired. He keeps his gaze on his pilled blanket.
“Yeah. Okay,” Theo agrees reluctantly. He’s at the door when he turns back. “Let me know when you get back to your place?”
“Sure,” Oliver concedes. And then his brother is gone.
He rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands until a kaleidoscope of stars bursts across his vision, but he doesn’t wake up.
May 1, 1851London, England
Beatrix’s heartbeat thunders in her ears. She’s too hot. Dizzy. Her hands shake as she gives Oliver back the obituary. He folds it carefully and slips it between the pages of his journal.
“How long do you have left?” She hates the shape of those terrible words in her mouth.
He offers her a weak smile. “Three hundred and fifty years.”
“You know that’s not what I mean.”
He won’t look at her. “About three months.”
