“You can sleep in here,” he offered, and dropped my things next to the nightstand.

“You don’t have to give up your bed for me.” My voice was small and quiet.

He shrugged. “Well, there’s a guest room, but it’s not made up and I’m not making you wait until you drop unconscious from exhaustion. Besides, you’ve slept here before.”

I blushed fiercely at the memory of sleeping in his bed. As if he noticed my embarrassment, his gaze fell. After several awkward seconds, he started to walk by me.

“I’ll let you change and get some sleep.”

“Will, wait.” I put a hand to his chest. I wanted to tell him that he could stay, that I wanted him to stay, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. “Do you always feel pain when I do?”

His entire body stiffened, and he took his eyes away from mine. “I didn’t want you to know that.”

My heart slipped into my stomach. “But it’s true, isn’t it? I saw … back at the bowling alley. How have you hidden this from me all this time? Why?”

He looked at me again. “I don’t always feel it when you hurt physically. It hits me when you hurt in your heart more than anything.”

I battled a sob that climbed my throat. “I can’t believe how much pain I’ve caused you for so long.”

“Some things hurt more than what my body feels,” he said gently. “I don’t care that it hurts. I can take a lot.”

Squeezing my eyes shut, I folded myself into him, and he wrapped his arms around me. He kissed my hair, and that terrible sob escaped me finally. “I don’t deserve you,” I said, burying my face in his chest.

“Don’t say that.” He pulled away and cupped my face in his hands. “Get some sleep. I’ll see you in the morning. Good night, Ellie.”

“Good night.”

As he closed the door behind him, I sat down on the edge of the bed. After all the running I’d done, I felt like I was finally ready to stop.

22

THE NEXT MORNING I FOUND I MUST HAVE HAD A thousand missed calls from my friends and Nana. I texted only one thing to Nana: I’m ok. Then I shut off my phone. People were looking for me, but I didn’t want to be found. Eventually I would have to go back to the rest of the world, but I didn’t want that to be anytime soon. I wasn’t ready to face real life without my parents in it.

I dragged myself out of Will’s bed and ventured into the hall. I heard voices coming from the study, and I crept toward the cracked-open door and peered through. Lauren leaned against the oak desk beneath the big bay window and Nathaniel stood beside her, resting one hand on the desk’s edge. Both their expressions were serious, his a little more pained than hers.

“I don’t know what you want from me,” he said quietly. There was no harshness in his voice to alert me that they had been arguing. If anything, they both looked very sad.

Lauren stared at him, her face falling heavily. She seemed emotionally exhausted. “I don’t know what to ask.”

“We won’t end that way,” he said. “I promise.”

She smiled softly. “You can’t promise that.”

“I love you,” he said, and touched her cheek. “That’s all that matters.”

“You’re sweet,” she said, and covered his hand with hers. She pulled away. “But that isn’t all that matters, and you know it. You’ve seen what Will has had to go through for centuries. Don’t lie to me. I don’t want you to feel that pain for me.”

His gaze flickered away from hers and back again, but he stayed quiet. His curly mop of copper hair flopped over his forehead.

“Do you really want that for yourself?” she asked. “I don’t belong here and you know it.”

“I know,” he said urgently, leaning into her, his hands running through her dark hair and over her slender shoulders, “that you do belong here. With me.”

She started to smile, but it faded before it could bloom. “Our ending won’t be beautiful.”

“Not if it’s compared to you.”

Her smile came through then, matching his own silly one. “Nathaniel, I’m serious. You’ll outlive me by a thousand years at least. Are you prepared for that?”

The laughter left his expression. “I don’t care.”

She frowned and touched his face. “Nathaniel …”

“I’ll stay by your side until the end,” he said. “Yes, I understand what Will endures, and I’ll gladly endure it for you.”

Her eyes glimmered, but before she could cry, his lips met hers intensely. When he pulled away, he kissed the tip of her nose and she laughed softly through her tears.

With a strange feeling blurring through me, I left Nathaniel and Lauren to their secret world and decided to go for a long walk.

I returned to a very quiet house. A single lamp lit the living room and I found Nathaniel sitting on a sofa reading a book. He looked up at me and smiled.

“Where is everyone?” I asked, sitting down beside him. “Lauren is grocery shopping,” he replied. “I made Will go with her. It’s good for him to get out of the house and do something ordinary.”

I laughed. “I’m sure he considers it torture. He doesn’t like ordinary very much.”

Nathaniel shrugged. “He isn’t suited for it. Some of us, like Marcus and I, have been able to adapt to a somewhat normal human life. We can get pretty normal jobs, form human friendships, business relationships, and have hobbies. But others, like Will and Ava—even Sabina—they’ve never felt comfortable in the human world. Either they feel they don’t deserve to integrate into mortal society, or they just feel like they don’t belong.”