5. Chapter 5- Lenora #2
He turns. “Do you understand what happens if I let myself...”
He stops.
“If you let yourself what?”
“Nothing.”
“Say it.”
“No.”
“August.”
“I can’t.”
My frustration spikes. “Then I’ll say it.” I move closer. “You want me.”
“That’s not the problem.”
“You missed me.”
“Not the problem.”
“You waited thirty-eight years.”
“Not the fucking problem.”
“Then what is?”
His face twists. “I LOVE YOU.”
Silence.
Everything in me stops.
My anger. My breath. My heartbeat.
For one impossible second, the world becomes completely still.
August looks like he wishes he could pull the words back inside his mouth.
“August...”
“No.” He backs away. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re happy.”
My eyes burn. “I’m not.”
“You’re a terrible liar.”
“So are you.”
“You love me?”
He laughs without humor. “Eight fucking lifetimes and you still need confirmation?”
“I don’t remember them.”
His face falls.
“So this is the first time you’ve ever told me.”
Not one of them.
Me.
He understands. “Yes.”
Something cracks inside me.
I reach for him. He reaches for me at the same time. And whatever restraint we had left dies.
I collide with his chest. His arms wrap around me. His mouth finds mine. Or mine finds his.
I don’t know. I don’t care.
The kiss is nothing like the first one.
That one surprised us. This one consumes.
August kisses me like he’s starving. Like thirty-eight years have been sitting between his ribs waiting for somewhere to go.
My fingers fist in his shirt. His hand slides into my hair. His other arm pulls me closer. And my body recognizes everything.
The angle of his mouth. The way his thumb presses beneath my jaw. The tiny pause before he deepens the kiss.
I know him.
God help me.
I know him.
My back hits the wall.
August breaks away just enough to breathe. “This is a terrible idea.”
“Probably.”
“We have to stop.”
“Then stop.”
He kisses me again.
A laugh escapes against his mouth.
“There she is,” he whispers.
I pull back. “What?”
His eyes search mine. “My Lenora.”
The words should scare me.
Instead they hurt. In a beautiful way. A terrible way.
I kiss him again. Slower this time. The desperation changes into something else. Something deeper.
His mouth trails along my jaw.
My head tips back. The moment his lips touch the new skin along my neck, my entire body shudders.
“August.” I moan.
He groans softly against me.
That sound goes straight through me.
My fingers slip into his hair.
He grips my waist. “Careful.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m trying very fucking hard to remember that we’re supposed to be afraid.”
“I’m terrified.”
“So am I.”
“Then why does this feel...” I stop.
“Like what?”
“Right.”
He goes still.
I hate how vulnerable that word feels.
“Does it feel right to you?”
His answer comes immediately. “Every time.”
My chest aches.
I pull him closer.
His hands move over me with a familiarity that makes my skin burn.
Every touch feels remembered. Not learned. Not new.
Remembered.
And suddenly the fact that I’m changing doesn’t feel like the worst thing in the world.
For one dangerous second, the thought comes, maybe becoming part of him wouldn’t be terrible. Maybe taking him inside me would mean I never lose him.
The idea chills me.
I pull back.
August notices.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Lenora.”
“I had a fucked-up thought.”
“Join the club.”
I almost tell him.
Then pain flashes across his face. He steps backward.
“August?”
His shirt hangs wrong. One shoulder lower.
“What happened?”
He pulls the fabric aside.
I stare.
Part of his collarbone is gone. The right side simply slopes where bone should be.
“No.” I touch my own shoulder. Pressure builds beneath my skin.
“Oh God.” Something hard pushes outward. Not through.
Under.
A ridge forms beneath my collar.
His collarbone. Inside me. “August...”
He stares.
Then his front tooth loosens and falls into his palm.
I cover my mouth. A sharp pressure fills my gum.
Seconds later, another tooth pushes into place beside mine.
His.
“No.”
Hair falls from his head. Dark strands slide across his forehead.
“Stop.”
“Lenora...”
“Make it stop.”
“I can’t.”
“Do something.”
“I don’t know how.”
“August!”
He looks destroyed. Not scared anymore.
Certain.
Then his eyes change. Realization.
“It isn’t intimacy.”
“What?”
His gaze locks onto mine. “That’s why we could never stop it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“We tried everything. Distance. Isolation. No touching. No sex. None of it mattered.” His face goes pale. “It’s love.”
The words hit harder than they should.
“What?”
“The molt isn’t triggered by touching me.”
“August...”
“It’s triggered by the bond.”
“No.”
“The more I love you...”
“Stop.”
“The more of me you become.”
“No.”
“And the less of me...”
“Stop.”
“There is.”
I grab his face. “I said stop.” I’m crying. I didn’t even realize it. “Then don’t love me.”
His expression breaks. “Lenora.”
“Stop loving me, please.”
The laugh that leaves him is so shattered it hurts to hear. “Every time I love you, you kill me.”
I close my eyes. “Then stop loving me.”
His forehead presses against mine.
For a long moment, there’s nothing except our breathing.
Then he whispers “I’ve tried.”
A sob escapes me.
He pulls me against him.
I cling to him.
I don’t know how I can mourn someone who hasn’t died. Maybe because some part of me already has. Eight times. Maybe grief remembers too.
I press my face against his chest, his heartbeat is strong beneath my cheek.
For now.
The thought destroys me.
“August?”
“Hm?”
“I think I love you too.”
His body goes rigid.
I pull back.
“No.” He shakes his head.
“I do.”
“You don’t.”
“I think I do.”
“You don’t remember me.” He growls.
“I don’t need to.”
“Lenora.”
“I don’t know if it’s mine. Or hers. Or every other version of me sitting inside my bones.” I press my palm over his heart. “But it’s there.”
Pain explodes through him and he screams then his knees buckle.
“August!” I catch him.
Something tears inside his chest.
I can hear it. Feel it. Then something changes inside mine. A second heartbeat.
I freeze.
No.
Thump.
Thump.
My own heart.
Then underneath it…thump.
Slower. Deeper.
His.
“Oh my God.” I press my hand against my chest.
August does the same to his as his face turns white. “Lenora.”
“I can feel you.”
His heartbeat inside me.
Two rhythms.
Two people.
One body slowly becoming something else.
“No.” My voice breaks. “No, no, no.”
His heartbeat weakens beneath his palm.
Mine grows louder.
The truth settles between us.
My love accelerates it too.
The cycle isn’t feeding on August alone.
It’s feeding on us.
Glass crunches across the room. We both turn. No one is there. But the wall above the broken jars is wet.
Black letters bleed through the paint.
I grip August’s hand.
NOW YOU REMEMBER WHY I MADE YOU FORGET.
My stomach drops. “What the fuck?”
August stares. His face empties. Then his entire body jerks.
“August?”
His eyes lose focus.
“August!”
I grab him.
He gasps.
When he looks at me again, there’s terror there. Not confusion. Recognition.
“What did you see?”
His breathing comes hard. “A room.”
“What room?”
“I don’t know.”
“What else?”
“You.”
My skin goes cold.
“Me?”
“Strapped to a table.”
“What?”
“Your body was almost...”
He stops.
“Almost what?”
“Finished.”
I feel sick.
“And you were there?”
He nods. “My hands were covered in blood.”
“August...”
“There was someone else.”
The apartment suddenly feels smaller.
“Who?”
“I couldn’t see them.”
“What happened?”
His eyes lift to mine. “I was screaming.”
“What were you saying?”
He swallows. “Take it from me.”
I stare at him.
“What?”
“I told them to take something from me.”
“What?” I say again.
“I don’t know.”
“And they did?”
His face changes. He looks toward the wall. At the handwriting. At the tooth that belonged to neither of us.
Then back at me.
“The voice said, ‘Gladly.’”
My arms cover my stomach. “August...”
He looks at me differently now. Not like I’m the thing killing him. Like he has finally considered something worse.
“I made myself forget.”
“What?”
“The handwriting is mine.”
“I know.”
“No.” He steps toward the message. “I meant all of it.” He points to the wall. “The note in the tooth. This. Whatever I did before...” His voice goes quiet. “I wasn’t trying to forget you.”
My skin prickles. “What were you trying to forget?”
He turns toward me. “I think I was trying to forget them.”
The room falls silent.
Somewhere beneath my skin, his heartbeat continues.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
And for the first time since this began, I understand something.
Maybe August isn’t disappearing because I love him.
Maybe I’m not becoming him because of some impossible curse between us.
Maybe someone designed it to look that way.
Maybe every lifetime we’ve spent blaming each other has been exactly what they wanted.
I stare at the black words bleeding down the wall.
Then at August.
“We weren’t alone.”
“No.”
A noise comes from behind me.
Soft and wet.
I turn.
The extra finger on my hand moves. Not because I moved it.
By itself.
It curls inward.
Once. Twice.
Then scratches a single letter into my palm.
R
I scream.
August grabs my wrist.
The finger keeps moving.
E
Then…
M
Blood wells beneath the nail.
August goes pale. “Lenora...”
The finger scratches faster.
E M B E R
It stops.
My hand trembles.
August stares at the word carved into my skin.
REMEMBER.
Then every light in the apartment goes out.