The Survivors: Body & Blood (book 3)

The Beginning, pt. 2

I MADE IT TO MANHATTAN UNDER THE COVER OF DARKNESS, INTO A CITY THAT was as silent as I'd ever heard it. Instead of appearing in the building I was headed for, I brashly let myself run through the streets. Against my better judgment, I ran between cars and around people, too fast for anyone to see me, or so I told myself. This was my sprint to the finish, and it seemed that when the chips were down, I liked being literal.

I didn't stop at the front door. Instead, I scaled the side of the building in a single bound, catching myself on his balcony. Adrenaline pumped in me, and I could feel every goddamned chimera cell in my body alive at the thought of an ending. Any ending.

The balcony door was locked, and I had to knock. Through the glass, he could see me, and I could see his dismay at my presence there, more supernatural than ever. He had not laid eyes on me in almost a year. Never mind that I laid eyes on him far more often.

He opened the door with reluctance.

"Sadie," he said sadly. I'm tired of loving you, he said in his mind. Tired of letting you do this to me. "This is nauseatingly familiar."

I heard the resentment. This was fair, but I had to act. "I left Everett." Cole froze. "And I came here. I came as fast as I could," I pleaded breathlessly.

I was the most selfish creature I'd ever known.

He tried to form words, but he couldn't. And he was trying to determine if he was dreaming this, so I went on. "I came here for you," I said, taking steps toward him as he took steps backward. I closed the door behind me.

"You left him," he said. It might have been a question. His heart was hardened from having watched me walk through that door so many times before. Every time before had ended in disappointment, he thought. He couldn't bear to do it again. He couldn't fall in love with me again. Not if I were going to walk away.

"I need you," I said. "Only you." I did need him. He was the only one who would help me.

He tried to consider this from all angles in his mind. And though his face was stoic, inside, he said, Please love me back.

I put my hands on either side of his face. "I need your help."

He succumbed to his feelings, closed his eyes and opened them again, and breathed. "Name it."

My thumbs sat by his ocean-blue eyes. "Oh, Cole. These blue eyes speak their own language. They're making promises I'm not sure a boy could ever keep," I said.

"I mean every promise they make," he breathed. What's happening? Has she thought of me this whole time, like I've thought of her?

"I know you do," I said, not breaking the gaze between us. "Now I need to ask something of you, something your eyes are saying you'll do."

"Anything," he whispered.

On my tiptoes, with my hands on his face, I pulled him toward me, and I kissed him. Hard.

His body melted in my grasp. His lips were soft and warm, his tongue like fire in my mouth. His long arms wrapped around me, and I could feel his pulse in every bit of him, a thumping against my skin, like the beat of a drum. His hands in my hair. His breath warm, sweet. His grasp so tight, but so weak by comparison to the supernatural embrace I'd felt before. His warm body rigid for getting what he had wanted so long.

It wasn't just a kiss. I couldn't call it a kiss. It was more than that because it went on until finally I was pressed against a wall, and he couldn't catch his breath, and I felt dizzy. I ignored the stabbing, suffocating guilt that coursed through my body. But what was I suppose to do? A century and a half of entrapment, of belonging to an in-between, of hating my existence, and now here, just for the price of the hottest kiss I'd ever given or received, I had freedom in my sights.