“Laurie—”
He ripped his hands away, clenching them. “Why’d you do it?” Voice pitched higher. “Why did you make me? Why did you make me feel this? Why—”
“I wasafraid,” Decker hissed, the all-consuming fear finally snarling to life. “I am so goddamned tired ofalwaystrying to be the better man. I am a selfish man, Laurie. I am a selfish man, and I am not sorry. A better man would have let you die and given you a decent Christian burial.”
Saving him was selfish and indulgent and ruining, and life would never be the same. Life wouldn’t have been the same without him. Ender’s Ridge wouldn’t have been the same, even if they managed to survive Elias a second time.
Clouds rumbled across the darkening sky.
The ninth plague.
Laurie sniffed, bowing his head and scrubbing his face with the heel of his hand. He was silent for a long moment, shifting in the sand. Laces from his shoe snagged on the rocks, the other lost in the hills.
Finally, small, hesitant, Laurie asked, “Would you do it again?”
Body broken, the choice of accepting a life without him, or welcoming a life with the uncertainty of hatred. The choice was always clear.
“We can only create one in our lifetime. I would find another way for you. A second chance to be remade,” Decker murmured.
A quiet sigh escaped Laurie and he took his hands once again. His flesh knitted back together as slowly as his words. “I thought dying would fix me. It’s made it worse.”
Decker’s lips curved gently. “There’s no cure for wanting a man in your bed. Not even death.”
Laurie almost smiled, but it soon faded, replaced with a tentative, hopeful flash.“After this is over, and we’re neighbors again,” he said, “we could be something more.”
There’s the preacher I know.
“We could.” Decker brushed his thumb along his lightly calloused palm. “You have forever to realize your ambitions. I have forever to make up for the time missed.”
Laurie smiled, and his curls tousled over his face in the gathering wind.
He would never see his face bathed in sunlight again, but Decker didn’t mind.
Laurie was just as beautiful in the moonlight.
