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Chapter Eighty-Nine

CARMINE

Through the kitchen window, I hear Luna and Nunzio moving around the kitchen to prepare breakfast. They lay hands on each other. That’s the least of it. They mocked me. He admitted being attracted to her. She called him handsome.

A knot of anger forms in my throat.

My lungs have shrunk to the size of a sparrow’s. I can’t get enough air, no matter how fast I breathe.

This is not the same as the anger I feel when I remember Charles’s hand on her. She did not consent to that. Nunzio’s touch is invited. It is not sexual. I don’t need to kill him for a violation. I need to calm down.

Both of them are human. He can give her a normal life. He can give her children.

I want those things for her, and I cannot deliver any of it. Am I going to wipe the counters and go grocery shopping? Or am I just going to make promises to keep her?

Nunzio’s manhood is not a threat. Neither his desires nor his dick are big enough to concern me.

It’s the way they speak together. The ease of it.

The laughter. The jokes that work and the ones that fail.

They come from different countries, but they share something Luna and I never will.

Humanity. Physical limits. The language of technology.

Nunzio is a problem, but the world is full of men like him. Millions, with her same fears and experiences. They all share a world with her. I just share a planet.

She has such a short time to live. That’s how long I have to hold her, but is it long enough?

The stake in my heart has brought me to her level. I am dying. I let that change my sense of what I am.

We are not the same.

I am an immortal with a problem.

She is a frail, young human woman who will spend her life enslaved to her emotions, then die like the rest of them.

It doesn’t matter if I love her. In the entire universe, in the face of eons, or in the space between atoms and the silence of a split second—my love doesn’t matter.

Nunzio grabs a towel from the sink and wipes the counter.

I am not jealous of a human man.

I am an immortal being.

I don’t have to love anyone. I outlive all relationships with humans. I cure jealousy by cheating death.

But they hug. He puts his arm around her waist, and she lays her cheek on his shoulder.

I hold my breath until he lets her go. When he does, she smiles and I can’t pull in air even if I want to.