“I have an early flight. If I need anything else, I’ll send for it.”
“Do I mean anything to you?”
He looked at her then, full in the face. “You’re my legacy,” he said, and walked out the door.
She wept, of course, stood there alone with spring wafting in on the pretty breeze.
She cancelled her date, spent her birthday alone in the house. A few days later, she sat, alone again, in the cemetery, preparing to destroy what the boy she’d cared for had become.
For the rest of her life she would wonder if she’d kept that date, would he have lived?
Now she stood in the bedroom of her Boston apartment, facing the man in whom she’d poured all her love, and her hopes. “Jeremy, please, let’s sit down. We need to talk about this.”
“Talk?” There was still dull shock in his eyes as he shoved clothing into a duffle. “I can’t talk about this. I don’t want to know about this. Nobody should know about this.”
“I did it wrong.” She reached out, had him shrug her away in a gesture so sharp and dismissive she felt it cut her to the bone. “I shouldn’t have taken you out, shown you. But you wouldn’t believe me when I tried to tell you.”
“That you kill vampires? What was I thinking, not believing you?”
“I had to show you. We couldn’t get married if you didn’t know everything. It wasn’t fair to you.”
“Fair?” He whirled toward her, and she saw it clearly on his face. Not just the fear, not just the rage. Disgust. “This is fair? You lying and deceiving me all this time?”
“I didn’t lie. I omitted, and I’m sorry. God, I’m so sorry, but it wasn’t something I could tell you when we first…and then I didn’t know how to tell you what I was, what I do.”
“What you are is a freak.”
She jerked her head back as if he’d slapped her. “I’m not a freak. I know you’re upset, but—”
“Upset? I don’t know who you are, what you are. Christ, what I’ve been sleeping with all these months. But I know this. I want you to stay away from me, away from my family, my friends.”
“You need time. I get that, but—”
“I’ve given you all the time you’re going to get. It makes me sick to look at you.”
“That’s enough.”
“It’s past enough. Do you think I could be with you, that I could touch you again after this?”
“What’s wrong with you?” she demanded. “What I did saved lives. It would have killed people, Jeremy. It would have hunted and killed innocent people. I stopped it.”
“It doesn’t exist.” He dragged the duffle off the bed they’d shared for nearly six months. “When I walk out of here, it doesn’t exist, and neither do you.”
“I thought you loved me.”
“Looks like we were both wrong.”
“So you walk out,” she said quietly, “and I cease to be.”
“That’s right.”
Not the first time, she thought, no, not the first. The only other man she’d loved had done the same. Slowly, she drew the diamond from her finger. “You’d better have this back.”
“I don’t want it. I don’t want anything that’s touched you.” He strode to the door, glanced back once. “How do you live with yourself?”
“I’m all I’ve got,” she said to the empty room. Then she set the ring on the dresser, lowered to the floor and wept.
Men are vile creatures, really. Using women up, casting them aside. Leaving them alone and broken. Better to leave them first, isn’t it? Better yet to pay them back, and leave them bleeding.