I dropped my stiff arms around her, trying not to wince. “I thought you would have noticed by now I don’t think too often.” My humor was still intact—that was a sure sign I was going to make it. However, I did not want to see my mutilated face before the magic fairy dust of Immortality had done its work and repaired me back to good as new. I’d never be the same if I did.

Sniffling, she looked at me. “That’s not true,” she said, her hand skimming over my face like she was trying to erase the swollen, bloody, bruised, gashed, meatball of flesh. “You’re the most thoughtful person I’ve ever known. I know you did that because you thought it through, not because it was an impulsive, testosterone fueled decision. And I’d thank you, but I can’t be thankful for something that did this to you.”

Tears were skiing down her face unchecked, but her voice gave no sign of them. If we were in a dark room, I wouldn’t have guessed she was crying the tears of a new widow. She wouldn’t give herself more than one release of sadness, her strength ran that deep.

“You don’t have to be thankful, Em,” I said, seeing two of her every other heartbeat. Trippy. “I’m thankful enough for the both of us that your monster of a boyfriend shut up and left. But I meant what I said,”—I looked at her as hard as a pair of swelling shut eyes could—“if that bastard says so much as he doesn’t like the color of your shirt and I hear about it, there’s not going to be a time limit and I’m not holding back. You understand?”

She nodded, her face forming around a different kind of sadness. The kind that ran deep and couldn’t be fixed. “I know, Patrick. I know,” she said, her voice as sad as her face. “That’s why I meant what I said earlier.”

My blood battered brows rose in confusion; she’d said a lot earlier.

“You need to leave me alone. Alone, alone. I can’t have you and Ty in my life at the same time. One, or both of you, is going to wind up dead.” She paused, swallowing a rock in her throat. “Just forget about me, Patrick. It won’t be hard to do. I promise.”

“Emma, what the hell?” I felt numb from the hit I’d just taken to my heart.

“The ambulance will be here soon,” she said, pressing a lingering kiss into my cheek. It was so rich in emotion, history, and goodbyes it choked the words right out of me. The first time I’d felt her lips on my skin was the last time I’d see her again if I did what she was asking and left her alone and forgot all about her.

I might have cried my first tear in a long time just then. So much warm fluid was flowing from every surface inch of my face I couldn’t be sure, but that familiar burning feeling in my eyes was there. And everything inside me certainly felt like crying.

“Goodbye, Patrick,” she whispered beside my ear, before winding out of our embrace and pushing herself through the couldn’t-get-enough-of-this-train-wreck spectators, running in the opposite direction. I’d seen too much of Emma’s fleeing back today.

The pain surged in a fresh wave with the healing balm of her touch now removed. I would have collapsed to the ground and let the pain, pity, and regret eat me away until I was swallowed by the ground, but I heard the wail of approaching sirens.

I didn’t want to explain why their needles couldn’t puncture my skin or why every wound on my body would be vanished like it’d never existed in a couple hours.

“Run,” I told myself, feeling like I was going to need to whip myself to leave this spot where Emma had just held me like everything was going to be all right, like everything I’d gone through wasn’t for nothing, like I was going to be all right.

She took all my hopes when she ran away.

“Run,” I repeated under my breath, the sirens turning the corner. The crowd was already parting so the men with their boxes could sew up the bloody blob who used to look like a man five minutes ago.

“Dammit, Patrick Hayward. Run!”

It took a slow inhalation and my forearm thrust to my chest, but I did. I ran. I ran away from the sirens, away from the crowd, away from my problems, away from everything that had the potential to hurt me.

Problems, no matter big or small, had a way of running faster than you and could be counted on to be waiting for you, rested and ready to pick up right where they’d left off, by the time you got to wherever you were running. I knew that, I’d learned that lesson a million times over, but it didn’t stop me from trying.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

I ran all the way to the edge of the Pacific, to the beach house where Emma’s sunny sweet smell assaulted me when I stepped in the door. She still lingered here, but once the scent was gone, no part of her would be here again.

The two hour run had done me good. Teleportation could have gotten me here in a blink, but when I ran, when I really let myself tear the ground apart, my mind emptied, and that was just what I needed. I ran until I couldn’t remember my name.

But no matter how furiously I surged ahead, I couldn’t forget hers.

I tore my battle ruined clothes off as I entered the guest bedroom and took a full length investigation of my body in the closet mirror. I was almost good as new, except for a couple of gashes over my brows that felt like they’d split open to the bone. They might take another hour to heal like they’d never been there.

But I knew, once I was fully healed, while my skin wouldn’t bear the scars of this day, the stuff that ran just below the skin would hold every scar like a mother holds a baby. I’d never fully heal from this day.

Accepting my fate by punching a fist-sized hole through the mirror, I cleared the bed of all things Emma, everything I’d picked for her, everything I’d wanted for her. I crawled into the covers, nak*d as the day I was born, broken as the day I died, aching to feel her arms around me. Aching to feel her anyway I could.

It was in that space between awake and asleep that I found her. She was waiting for me—she’d been waiting for me all along. She’d only needed me to look for her in the right place.

I didn’t let myself slip into sleep. I stayed in this space, caught in between worlds, belonging to neither. I stayed with her and she stayed with me. If we couldn’t be together in this world or that, we’d create our own to be together.

It was, perhaps, the most meaningful epiphany of my life.

I laid low for a few days, despite it nearly killing me. Every other second I wanted to go find Emma, so the seconds in between I convinced myself to stay put. It was driving me mad, feeling like I was being torn down the middle. So I communed with the waves to find the solace I was lacking, and when they grew tired of me, I tucked a blanket around myself and lounged beneath the stars beside a fire I couldn’t seem to give much life to. Even the embers missed her.

I lay beneath that vast night sky believing Emma might be doing the same thing, and this small thing was perhaps the only right I had to claim of a girl that wasn’t mine. I even tried to give perspective to my problems the way Emma could when she viewed the night sky, but no matter how long or hard I looked, it didn’t work for me. My problems didn’t seem any smaller, any less significant, and their weight didn’t lighten.

I knew what I had to do before I could say goodbye. Before I could “just leave her alone.” I had to tell her how I felt. Holding nothing back. Leaving nothing to interpretation. Tear open my chest and expose my soul to her. That was the only way I could move forward with no regrets.

If, after laying it all on the table, she still wanted me to disappear from her life . . . well, it would rip my beating heart from my chest, but I’d do it. I’d do anything for her, even if the last thing was saying goodbye. I didn’t know how I was going to look at the girl I loved and tell myself the only thing left to do was walk away, but I prayed I’d find the strength to do so when and if that moment arrived.

By Thursday night, I hoped my face—that had healed as if a pair of brass knuckles hadn’t beat it to hell—wouldn’t cause too much alarm. Three days after taking a beating of that caliber, the swelling and bruising should have just begun to peak, so I was a fool for hoping Emma wouldn’t notice this if I didn’t give her something bigger to think about. I was counting on my tell-all profession to do the trick.

A few minutes away from the campus, I punched a number in my cell, hoping I still had one ally on my side.

Four rings, and then a click. “What?”

“Jules, it’s me.”

“Hey, Me,” she said, turning down the grunge rock raging in the background. “I heard our favorite person in the world went all VanDamme on your pretty little face. I hope he didn’t do too much permanent damage.”

Running a yellow light, I said, “Don’t worry. My face is just as breathtaking as before.”

“Thank the gods.”

“Where is she, Jules?” I asked, drifting around the corner of the campus’s entrance. “I messed up. I need to see her.”

She sighed into the phone, no reply coming.

“Please, Jules,” I said. “If she still hates me when I’ve said what I’ve needed to say since the day after I met her, I’ll leave her alone. I promise.” This, despite being a promise I didn’t want to keep, was one I knew I could.

“All I can say is you two better name your first child, girl or boy, after me,” she said. “It’s against my kind’s policy to be a purveyor of all things of a mushy, lovey dovey variety and you’ve made me a regular Yenta.”

“You’re an angel among goth chicks, Jules.”

“She’s at a study group in the library. She’ll be done at eight.”

“I’m buying you your first place out of college,” I said, jerking the Mustang around the corner, heading to the library. Heading to Emma.

Julia laughed. “I’m holding you to that. And don’t think you can get away with a fifth wheeler rotting away in a trailer park. Don’t let the clothes fool you—I’m a girl who enjoys the finer things in life.”

“Whatever you want, Jules. I owe you big time,” I said, pulling into the first available parking spot. “Gotta go.”

“Go get her, sexy buns,” she said with a purr before hanging up.

I could see the library from where I was parked. I imagined I could see Emma through its brick walls, leaning over a book, tapping her forehead with a pencil in concentration. It was every day moments like these I wanted to live a lifetime of. Every day moments I was minutes away from possibly losing forever.

I bowed my head against the steering wheel, calming myself, saying prayers to whoever would listen, thinking positive thoughts. I’d never lacked for confidence, and I’d always felt grounded in who I was and proud to be that person. I was a man who knew what I was made of, but I was an instant away from finding out if that man was good enough for Emma Scarlett. If everything I’d made of myself was anything she wanted.

Slamming my hands against the dashboard to release some tension, I threw open the door and took the first step in closing the physical and, fate willing, the emotional distance, between Emma and me.