Chapter 32 #2
“You’re coming anyway,” Paul states.
“Unfortunately,” Ridge scoffs.
Then nobody speaks as the waves keep rolling onto the shore. For one stupid second, I want to turn around. Want one more minute, one more joke, another hug.
One more chance not to do this.
Once we walk through this doorway, nothing is guaranteed anymore.
But instead of doing what I really want, I put my hand on the door, and it opens onto nothing.
“Universe, be good.”
It’s black.
Not dark. Black. No floor, no ceiling, and no edges. If there’s a room, it’s been swallowed whole, along with my voice, when I question, “Everyone here?” The words come out and stop, as if the dark ate them before they finished.
Behind me, the door swings shut with a sound like a held breath, and then there is nothing, no up, no down, just five of us standing on a floor I can’t feel in the dark and can’t see through, holding our breath.
Then comes light.
From no source at all, a hard circle that defines the ground beneath us and shows me four other Tessas with their faces pale and their eyes wide.
And him.
Lucien is standing at the edge of the light with his back to me, but then he turns and looks at all five of us.
He scoffs. “And what is this?”
One of the Tessas steps forward. Paul. I know it’s him because of how he plants himself half in front of the rest of us.
“This is the last-ditch effort,” he says, in her voice, and it’s good, it’s so good I can’t even tell the difference. “I’ll let go of Lennon. I’ll untether from her completely, do the soul contract, and step into elsewhere with you. For good, if you can prove that you love me.”
Lucien tilts his head, the faintest curl tugging at his lip. “And why now? Why would you agree to untether from her, after all this time refusing?”
“Because she’s not alone anymore.” It’s the real Tessa who says it.
I feel it land before I understand it, a blade going in clean under the ribs of a body I’m only borrowing.
She’s not alone anymore.
“I’m not her only tether anymore,” Tessa goes on. “She’ll be fine without me.”
Did she think about this?
Did she actually think about leaving? Then why hasn’t she?
Because deep down, she doesn’t want to, says a quieter voice in my head, the one that watched her let Derek hold her hand on the beach and not pull away.
I hold my face together with everything I have, because if I crack now, and Lucien feels one wrong thing off me, this whole thing comes down.
I make myself step forward.
“If you can tell which one of me is the real Tessa,” I say in her voice, and I don’t know how it comes out so even.
“If you can pick me out of all of these and know it’s me, the actual me, not a copy, then I’ll believe you really want me there.
And I’ll do it.” I lift my chin. Chin up, breathe through the nose.
“But you have to give me something too. To show me you mean it. To show me you can sacrifice something big like I’m about to for you. ”
“And what would that be, love?” Lucien asks.
“Release every promise you’ve ever taken.”
The dark seems to lean in when Lucien does.
I keep going because if I stop, I’ll shake. “Not only mine. All of them. Every single one you’re still holding onto, from anyone, ever. I want a clean slate. You and me, in elsewhere, forever, and everything else gone. Nothing left holding anyone but us.”
Lucien looks at me for a long time. He tilts his head the other way, studying, and the moonstone that is hidden under Tessa’s clothes now on my borrowed chest goes from warm to hot, and I think, please, please, please, to no one, to the stone, to Seraphine, to whoever is listening on the other side of the dark.
“If you’re willing to sacrifice this much for me,” I continue. “And if you can recognize the true me, the soul you actually want to bind yourself to, then you’re worthy to have me. Worthy of me choosing you.”
He smiles. “That’s far too easy.”
“Is it?” the real Tessa asks.
His eyes don’t leave me. “It is.”
And then, the way another man might mention the weather, he announces, “I release every promise I have ever been given and every promise ever made to me.”
The real Tessa takes a startled little breath, and I watch it move through her, the loosening, the lightness, the release. On my left, the Tessa I already know is Nevan, because she’s been white-knuckling the whole time, sways slightly.
Fuck.
Is he able to tell?
“Now,” Lucien says, and his green eyes come up bright. “I get to choose, and you’ll agree to the contract. Right?”
“When you choose right.” Ridge-Tessa agrees. “Choose the right me, and we’ll seal it right here, if you’re so sure of yourself.”
Lucien’s gaze moves across us. One Tessa. Two. Three. Four.
Five.
It stops on me again.
He smirks, lifts one hand, and lazily points directly at my chest. “I choose you.”
My heart soars. He picked wrong, he picked me, get her out, somebody get her out, and I clamp down on every muscle in my borrowed face to keep it off me, because I will not look at Ridge, I will not look at Paul, I will not look at Nevan and give them away.
I need to keep him looking at me long enough for them to move.
I cross the little circle of light, and I come to stand in front of him, close enough to smell the roses.
Lucien looks down at me and smiles, and it’s almost gentle. “Do you really think,” he says quietly for me to hear. “That I don’t know exactly who you are, Lennon Maes?”
The dark drops out from under my stomach.
Shit.
He lifts one hand and tenderly brushes his knuckles over my cheek, and I feel Tessa peel off me like a wet sheet and my bones slide back, my face emerging from the cold, and then I’m standing there as me.
Just me.
Lennon-shaped and caught, with nowhere left to hide.
Several gasps and curses come from behind me, but I hold my palm out, gesturing for them to stay put.
Lucien holds up his hand to shake.
“Now that I gave you what you wanted, it’s your turn. Come and stay forever in elsewhere with me, Lenny. Make a soul contract with me.”
My heart is slamming so hard I can feel it in my teeth. His hand is there, waiting patiently, and I have never in my life been this afraid of anything as small as a hand.