“Brook. I didn’t expect to see you here. I thought you were back at the hotel.”
“I thought I would check in on Magma. He was pretty badly injured. I’m doing a food run first.” She nods toward me. “Do you want anything?” she asks him.
“I just ate,” Flint tells her.
“Okay, then. I’ll be back soon.”
Flint steps in and lets her pass. He watches the door close, and then he turns to look at me. There’s an expression on his face I can’t quite read. It’s somewhere between knowing and amused.
“What?” I ask.
“She likes you.”
I put my head back against the pillow and look at the ceiling. “She came to check on me. She was being polite. Like she said, I was pretty badly injured.”
He shakes his head and sniggers. “Please! She’s into you. She came to see you,” Flint says, sitting, “and now she is going to bring you food.” He spreads his hands. “She wants you.”
“Oh, please. She does not.”
“I’m just saying. I hope you’re going to do something about it.”
“I’m not.”
He leans his elbows on his knees. “Magma.”
“I had a mate,” I say. “Sage died. That was my chapter. It’s done and dusted. The End. No prologue.”
“You didn’t die,” he says softly.
“Yes, and?”
“You didn’t die,” he says again. “And you could have all of it again, if you’d let yourself. Sage would have wanted that for you.”
The irritation that comes up in my throat isn’t at him, and we both know it.
“You never met Sage,” I tell him. I try to keep the edge out of my voice and mostly manage it. “You don’t know what she would have wanted. Leave it alone!”
He holds the look a second longer and then drops his gaze to his hands. “No. You’re right. I didn’t know her.” He pauses. “But I feel like I do. Because you’ve talked about her so many times over the years I’ve known you.” He pauses again. Then adds, “If it had been the other way around, what then?”
“It wasn’t.”
“Let’s just say that you had died instead of her. Would you have wanted her to be alone for the rest of her life?”
“Yes!”
He laughs. “Don’t be an ass! Be serious. This is serious. Would you want Sage to be all alone for years and years? Think about it. She’d be lonely and sad.”
“I’m not lonely and sad.”
Am I?
No! Fuck!
“Answer the question. Be honest with yourself.”
I think about Sage with her quick temper and her even quicker laugh. I think about how big her heart was, and how she could fill a room without raising her voice. I think about her sitting all alone for years and fucking years.
“No,” I admit. “I’d have wanted her to be happy. If that meant taking another mate, then so be it.”
