CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT || TOBIAS
W e left the hunters back at the factory. Michael had been staring at Bryan like he was Christmas morning or something and I didn’t like it one bit. Besides, any longer in his presence and I probably would have punched him in his smug, stupid face. He’d earned it, after everything he and Danny had put us through.
Bryan pulled me into an embrace the moment we stepped over the threshold into the motel room, kicking the door closed with his foot. His arms around me were firm and deliciously strong, but he still seemed somehow vulnerable. Like all he wanted in the world was for me to hold him.
“You scared the crap out of me,” he murmured, his voice rougher than it should have been.
“I know,” I said. “But I’m okay. We’re both okay.”
Though, that wasn’t completely true. I wasn’t okay. Not at all.
Because Bryan’s business here was concluded. The vision I had been shown had almost certainly been of Bryan’s death caused by the hunters. Whatever strand of fate had been leading Bryan there was now unraveled. I was sure of it. And I felt equally sure that Bryan was aware of that fact as well.
So where did that leave us?
I had promised Bryan I would leave once this was over. I had sworn that, if he asked me to vanish from his life for good, I would. He’d said before that he wanted me to stay. But then, back in the hospital, he had still seemed to be harboring doubts. So, the question was, did he still want me to go?
The idea of it caused something in my chest to tighten painfully. I had let Bryan go once before, and it had been awful. But we had hardly known each other back then. I had known, intellectually, that he was my mate. But I hadn’t been in love with him then. My body had, maybe, on a purely instinctive level. But the rest of me had barely even known him.
It was nothing like now. There wouldn’t be anyone else for me, ever. I didn’t want there to be. I only wanted him.
Bryan pulled back slightly, his vibrant green eyes searching my face, as though memorizing it. As though he was filing everything away for when he left. But whatever he saw there caused a flash of pain in his eyes.
“Tobias,” Bryan said my name softly, stepping out of my embrace. He dropped his eyes to the ground. “Look, we should talk.”
Something lurched in the pit of my stomach as I realized it was happening, right now.
Somehow, I had thought that maybe we could have one more day. Or even a few more hours, where I could pretend that he was mine.
“Yeah,” I said back, fighting to sound normal, though my heart was cracking in two. “I guess we should.”
“Sorry—am I interrupting?”
The voice was so incongruous that both of us startled.
Bryan reacted first. Before I could even blink, he turned so that he was in front of me, putting himself between me and the potential threat. He held himself in a deceptively open way, with his knees slightly bent and both arms seemingly relaxed at his side. I’d seen vampires stand this way before; it was a stance that allowed them to move in any direction in an instant, with the full movement of both limbs. But, even through the psychic wall he held up between us, I could sense the tension that had instantly coiled through him.
My sister was sitting on the edge of the bed, watching us.
I could tell immediately that Poppy wasn’t really here in the room. It was almost certainly a bilocation spell, allowing her to be in two places at once. It was extraordinarily advanced magic, the kind that isn’t even taught to master apprentices, but which is only taught to coven leaders and those in the witches’ council.
Bryan relaxed immediately, the fight seeming to go out of him. He shot me an almost sheepish look, then stepped out of my way so I could speak to my sister.
“Poppy,” I greeted her. “What are you doing here?”
“Sorry for just dropping in like this, but no one called me. I had to be sure you were okay.”
“Oh, right. Poppy helped me find you,” Bryan explained. He winced, turning back to my sister. “I’m sorry I didn’t call.”
“You were busy rescuing my brother from those asshats. You’re forgiven. Also, thank you.” Then she paused, frowning as she took us both in. She arched an eyebrow. “Things have obviously gotten a little more serious between you two. So. When’s the wedding? Can I be best man?”
Bryan and I traded a look, and I could sense from his mind that we were both trying hard not to laugh.
“We’re not quite there yet,” I told her. “But when we are, you can definitely be best man. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
“Good.” She grinned at me, her eyes wet. And I realized right then, how afraid for me she must have been. Her voice went thicker, and she choked out, “Ethan is going to be fucking livid . I can’t wait. I bet he’s going to invent new swear words.”
We grinned at each other, then she lost her watery smile a few moments later, her expression growing a touch more serious. She bit her bottom lip, studying me intently.
“There’s something else. Another demon, actually. Some idiot mundane managed to conjure one when he and his friends were messing around. It’s just an imp, totally not that big of a deal. But still. I mean… if everything is sorted out here…?”
She let that hang out there between us.
And then I realized she was asking me to come back.
Bryan seemed to get it too at the exact same moment, because he stiffened and his eyes widened slightly. He swallowed hard. But then he met my gaze. “If you have to go, I get it. You being the coven’s big guns and all when it comes to spirits and demons.”
Ice slithered under my skin at his words. Or, rather, it was at the broken sort of way he said it, the way he hugged his arms over himself, like he was keeping his insides from spilling out. I understood that only too well.
But he seemed determined to hide how much it cost him to say that to me, because in the next moment, he looked back over and flashed me a smile that didn’t even come close to reaching his eyes. “It’s okay, really. It’s fine.”
It wasn’t fine.
My future wasn’t with the coven any longer. It was with Bryan. If he would have me, that was. The thing is, I had no idea if he wanted the same thing, because we still hadn’t talked about it. Maybe he still wanted me to leave. Maybe he didn’t want a mate, after all. Maybe he didn’t feel the same way about me that I felt about him.
But that didn’t matter. Even if he didn’t choose me, I would still always choose him.
“I’ll give you the banishment spell if you need it,” I told her, at last. “But I’m not coming back. Probably not for a very long time. If ever.” I caught Bryan staring at me as I said this, so I turned and held his gaze and added, “I’m staying with my mate. For as long as he’ll have me.”
Poppy pursed her lips, but she didn’t look especially surprised by this news. “Yeah,” she said shortly. “I figured as much. Well, Tatiana will be pissed, but she’ll get over it. You’re coming back for holidays though. All of them. Non-negotiable.”
“We’ll figure something out,” I promised.
Something softened fractionally in Poppy’s expression as her gaze slid to Bryan. “Take good care of him?”
Bryan nodded. “I can do that.”
“I might pop in now and then,” Poppy warned me. “You’re still my brother. And besides, bilocation is way cooler than using a telephone.”
“Knock first,” Bryan said, deadpanning.
Poppy grinned at us, even though her eyes had gotten a little watery after all. Then she winked out of existence.
The silence between us was absolute for a long moment.
“I meant it,” I said quietly.
I had already put everything on the line for this. But if he didn’t want the same thing, even now, I knew I would still walk away. It would shatter me, but I would, if he asked me to.
“How could you choose me over your entire life?” Bryan demanded. He sounded more stunned than anything else. “Your coven needs you.”
“My coven will be fine without me,” I assured him. “They have been for a while now. And I chose you because I’m in love with you.”
Bryan bit his lower lip, suddenly looking more vulnerable than I’d ever seen him before. “I’m in love with you, too,” he admitted, meeting my gaze. His green eyes were wide and shining. “I think that maybe I always have been.”
“Do you…” I trailed off, my heart suddenly hammering in my chest. I wasn’t used to making myself this vulnerable and I didn’t like it one bit. But I would do it for him. I took a breath, steeling myself to ask the only thing that mattered now. “Do you still want me to go?”
“No.”
It was just a single word, but it was like magic. The tension drained away from me in an instant. I found myself grinning at him like a madman.
“No?” I asked, unable to believe it.
“I want a life with you,” Bryan confirmed, grinning back at me, his eyes still shining. “I’m not sure exactly what that looks like yet. But we can figure it out as we go.”
I searched his eyes and found that he was serious. “If you’re sure?”
“I’m not all better or anything,” he replied. He gestured vaguely to himself and gave me a small smile. “This is what you’re getting. I’m going to try to be okay, though. I’m going to try to be better than okay, as much as I can be.”
“Bryan, you’ve always been exactly enough. And I swear to you that I will remind you of that every day, for as long as you’ll let me. And, for what it’s worth, I don’t think I’ve met a kinder or more heroic man in my entire life.”
“You’re just saying that because you want to get into my pants.”
“I definitely want to get into your pants,” I agreed, grinning at him. “I plan to do some fantastically bad things with you in a minute. But I need to say this, and you need to hear it.”
When he didn’t protest, I went on. “You came here, without any backup, because you wanted to fight evil. You saw something dark inside yourself and your very first instinct wasn’t to go off and hurt people or try to escape into hedonism or to pretend nothing at all even happened. Instead, you wanted to help people you had never even met before. You wanted to do good.”
“Anyone would have.”
“I love that you’re the kind of person who thinks that, but it’s not true at all. Most people wouldn’t.”
“I didn’t do much.”
“You killed the wraith,” I reminded him. “You got justice for Lee and Lisa and their daughter. You stopped it from hurting anyone else. You did that, when no one else could. Even though you didn’t take any pleasure from it, you still did it.” I paused, then flashed him a grin. “Plus, you totally kicked Michael’s ass. And if anyone ever needed his ass kicked, it’s that guy.”
I went on, “And speaking of, you could have let the hunters die when we were at the house. It wouldn’t have even been their blood on your hands. But you knew exactly what they were capable of, and even though you were afraid of them, you still insisted that we go out of our way to rescue them. And then you helped save Annie’s life, with no questions asked. You didn’t wonder what was in it for you or balk at the idea of giving up some of your blood, even though you hadn’t fed properly in however long—weeks, probably. And you still did all that, even though you understood that it might have meant putting yourself in the path of a potentially angry spirit.”
At the mention of Teresa, Bryan lost his smile, his expression going more thoughtful.
But he didn’t interrupt.
“You’re kind. You’re compassionate. You’re brave. And you were totally planning on tearing that factory apart to save me. So, if you put all that together… well, it means that you’re kind of a badass,” I continued, meaning every single word. “And maybe you’re not ‘fixed,’ whatever that means, but maybe I don’t need you to be. Maybe I just need you to be you . I think I just need you to always be whatever you are, and that will be more than enough.”
When I had finished, he pulled me down for a kiss.
“There’s one more thing we need to do,” Bryan said, when he pulled back.
“What’s that?”
“I need to face Teresa Dames and convince her to leave me alone, once and for all. I don’t want to start our life with her haunting me. I won’t do that to either one of us.” He paused, frowning, his expression becoming thoughtful again. “And…well, this situation isn’t really fair to her , either, I guess. I need to let her say whatever she needs to say. I need to help her let go, if I can.”
I didn’t tell him that it was Teresa Dames who had shown up and broken the binding circle the hunters had me in earlier. She was the reason he was still alive in the first place. If she hadn’t manifested and helped me when she did, Michael would have driven a wooden stake through Bryan’s heart and I wouldn’t have been able to stop him. I tried not to think too hard on that, or else I’d want to go and punch Michael in the face all over again.
But I strongly doubted that Teresa intended to exact vengeance on Bryan. Though, I suspected that Teresa would tell him that herself, soon enough.
“Okay,” I told him, meeting his gaze. He looked scared but determined. “I’ll help you make peace with Teresa Dames. And then I’m totally getting into your pants.”
Bryan’s lips twitched at that. Even though his eyes were filled with apprehension, a moment later, his amusement won out over his fears and he smiled. “Yeah, okay. It gives me something to look forward to. We just need to do this one last thing first.”