I felt a sob explode from my throat, but it was caught and stifled by the numbness before it reached my mouth. I took a rigid step towards him, reaching my hand out to brush the long tufts of hair covering his forehead, but stopped short just inches from his face, remembering what the last touch from me had done to him.
His near lifeless form before me was all the reprimand I needed. I withdrew my hand, having to come to terms that, along with my goodbye, I’d have to settle for our last intimate touch to have been shared last night. I bit my lip, wishing the numbness could have been more encompassing. I would have preferred to have been run over a hundred times by the rotary tiller the tractor pulled than to experience the pain that was shredding me at present.
More than anything, I wanted to be with William. I didn’t want to leave him . . . but I also knew this was the selfish piece of me that I couldn’t seem to bury. All the other pieces of me wanted him safe and since I knew without a sliver of a doubt he would never be safe if he was anywhere within a thousand mile radius of me, this was the only answer. I had to leave.
To vanish as if I’d never entered his life and turned it upside down. The woman he’d dreamed of for generations was not me.
His body suddenly jerked, as if able to hear my dark thoughts. I wanted to press my lips to his and have him suffocate away every worry, until he’d injected enough wistfulness that I felt nothing but him in my drug-induced state. I didn’t stand a chance against the persuasiveness of his lips. His mouth parted and his breathing became heavy, as if tempting me to do just that.
I took a step back, not trusting myself, and dug in my pocket for the damp piece of notebook paper that was the only thing I had left for him. A lousy, wide-ruled, recycled piece of paper I’d scribbled down a string of lies on. Lies that felt blasphemous given everything we had, but things I had to write so he wouldn’t come looking for me the moment he came to. Lies that I knew would be just enough believable so he’d leave me alone and not search the world endless times over.
Because I knew if William suspected, even in the slightest, that I’d left to keep him safe from me, he’d somehow find me even if I sequestered myself to a dried-up, boarded-up well smack in the center of the Serengeti. So my lies had to be selfish requests, I had to make him believe I wanted out for me, and I knew—despite the pain it would cause him—he could never deny me anything.
I’d scratched down vile things, things that said I was tired of waiting for the Council, sick of him being gone all the time, weary of his family and not fitting in, and the worst of them all, that I didn’t love him anymore.
It’d taken a solid thirty minutes to write down that last sentence that included a handful of words that on their own were harmless, but when combined formed a wedge that promised to divide. Words that, when read, would cause pain, but that pain would one day melt away and there would be more than one set of arms eager to suck away the pain that rebellious girl from his past had left behind.
Years from now, William would be reclining in the body of another woman and wouldn’t be able to recall the way I smiled at him or the way my cheeks flushed when he touched me. Yes, there would be pain, but it would be short-lived for him. For me . . . that was another story.
I gazed hard at his face, photographing it into my mind. I dropped the letter on his nightstand, trying not to imagine his face when he read the last sentence. My last words to him, the last thing he’d have of me, words that basically told him I was in love with someone else.
Not able to resist it, I leaned down to feel his breath break across my face, inhaling him one last time.
“Goodbye,” I whispered beside his ear. “I won’t hurt you anymore.”
The tears weren’t flowing as they should have been, probably because I was more shell than soul now, but I didn’t mind because I was able to take my last look of him with perfect vision. The man who’d filled me with a love and desire I never dreamed possible and the man I’d always known wasn’t meant for me.
“Thank you . . . for everything,” I said, looking my last on him before turning and leaping out the window in the same second. Now I’d said good-bye, I needed to put as much space and time between us as I could.
I ducked into the shadows outside the house, preparing to launch down the gravel trail and away from this place that now felt like foreign soil.
“Maybe I should start teaching you the fine arts of espionage,” a voice commented behind me. “Rule number one—always be aware of your surroundings.”
I somehow stiffened and relaxed at the same time. “Patrick,” I whispered, “you’re alright.” I turned around to see him getting off the wooden swing hanging from the sprawling maple in the back yard. He walked towards me, adorned in blue scrub bottoms and a white undershirt. His sandals flopped his way towards me. “You mind telling me what you’re doing sneaking in and out of my brother’s bedroom at this hour?’
His eyebrows peaked and he stopped several feet in front of me. “Because, given his current state, I know you weren’t doing what you two are normally up to.” His impish grin didn’t quite explode with its normal force, plus his shoulders slumped a couple inches lower than normal.
“How are you feeling?” I whispered, not able to look him in the eyes. “Are you alright?”
“Never been better,” he joked. “Nothing like the zap of ten of John Townsend’s thugs to make you feel alive again.”