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CHAPTER THREE

SAVANNAH

I slammed my bedroom door shut behind me and staggered inside a few feet, then just stopped. The tears I’d been fighting burst free, scorching a raw, hot path up my throat as I broke down. I pressed my fingers to my closed eyes and tried to breathe deep, slow breaths to stop the tears. My heart couldn’t handle much more of this, if this was what handling it looked like. My breaths hitched on every inhale. My lungs seemed to rattle.

I wasn’t over watching Cooper die, holding his body in my arms as I begged him to come back to me, to just stay out of the light and come back. Not even a little bit. That night haunted my waking thoughts and dreams. I heard Riah’s pleading words to him in the wind rushing through my hair every single day.

When he met Frankie and their soulmate marks appeared, I’d been gutted. For the first time since Riah dragged Cooper away from the light at the end of the tunnel, I understood why he wanted to step into it and give it all up. I wanted to live but watching my nightmare come to life before my very eyes made me want to die. It was everything I feared it would be . . . and then it was just gone. Fake. They weren’t soulmates at all. Somehow that was so much worse because now it meant I’d have to do this all over again: the waiting for the apocalypse and then the inevitable torturous death. It was living the worst day of my life and then waking up to have to do it all over again. There were horror films less traumatic than this.

A new girl would eventually come and be his.

And I will want to die all over again .

Someone knocked on my door. Without thinking, I turned and opened it—then gasped.

It was Cooper.

He just stared. Fresh tears slid down my cheeks. His face scrunched up in pain and then he reached for me and all of my control snapped. I fisted his shirt and dragged his mouth down to mine. Our lips crashed together in a panicked frenzy as our feet carried us deeper into my room. I heard my door slam shut, then both of Cooper’s big, warm hands gripped my face. We stumbled backwards until my legs crashed into my bed and gravity sent us crashing onto the fuzzy blankets. That Irish Spring soap scent of his invaded my senses, melting me from the inside out. His body pressed into me, pushing me into the mattress and sending electric heat pulsing through every inch of my body. We rolled a couple of times and then the reality of what we were doing crashed back into my mind like a bomb.

I pushed off of him and scrambled off the bed as a broken sob ripped up my throat. I stumbled toward my door and hot tears spilled like lava down my face. “I c-c-an’t?—”

“Savannah—”

“I can’t?—"

“I didn’t come up here for that?—”

“Then what did you come up here for?” I snapped, my voice breaking. I pushed my hands into my hair and pulled. “Why? What are you trying to do to me?”

“To talk”

“ To talk ?” I spun around so fast my balance swayed and I crashed into the door. The sight of him sitting at the foot of my bed with red, puffy lips and a blush in his cheeks made me feel like I was being buried alive. My chest was so tight it burned. I felt my sternum straining against my ribcage like my heart was literally trying to burst its way out. A traitorous tear slid down my cheek, so I wiped it away with my long sleeve and then wiped my now running nose from crying. There wasn’t much to say for us but at least talking was less dangerous than his lips on mine in that bed. “Fine. Let’s talk, Cooper. Tell me something . . . Did you know? Did you know that was all fake?”

He grimaced and scratched the back of his head, which only made my gaze focus on the muscles in his arms flexing. “I mean, Tegan told me she was making me invisible and duplicated like Frankie, but I had no idea Everest was going to?—”

I gagged and held my hands up. “Not that. I don’t ever want to speak about that again.”

He frowned and cocked his head to the side. “Then what— oh .”

I sniffled. “Yeah, oh. Did you know?”

“No, I swear I had no idea that soulmate mark was fake.” His voice was thick and raw. “I genuinely thought it was real.”

“Tegan didn’t tell you?”

He shook his head. “That night Sweyn dragged Frankie out of the house through her dream . . . Tegan came to me and told me she had a crazy plan and asked if I would be willing to take part, so I said yes. I said I didn’t want to know what it was because . . . because I’m not that good of an actor. Tegan plays insanely dangerous tricks that rely on natural reactions or people could get killed. So I just . . . trusted her. She warned me it was messed-up and crazy but her plans always work?—”

“So you said yes without asking.” I nodded. “Without wanting to know.”

His face fell and the pain in his pale-green eyes made my breath catch in my throat. “Savannah, if I had known that was her plan, I would have warned you.”

I mashed my lips together to try and stop the tears, but it was useless. “And when the soulmate mark appeared, you didn’t think for a second that maybe that was the trick?”

“Honestly, no.”

A strangled cry left my lips. “Why not?”

He threw his hands up. “Because nowhere in my mind did I think Tegan would play with the emotions around a soulmate mark. But all is fair in war and I’m the one who told her not to tell me—she was going to?—”

“Again, no part of you thought?—”

“No.” His gaze blazed with passion. “I didn’t think of it for even a second.”

“Why not?” I didn’t even recognize the sound of my own voice. “Were you so ready to be Frankie’s?—”

“ Because all I could think about was you, ” he whispered.

I gasped.

He took a deep breath, then let it out, but it sounded ragged. “Because while I was supposed to be excited and feeling something for my soulmate, all I felt was suffocating pain that it wasn’t you.”

I squeezed my eyes shut and shook my head. My stomach turned, so I wrapped my arms around my waist. “We already knew it wasn’t me.”

“Apparently my heart was in denial,” he said softly.

I cried and leaned back against my bedroom door.

But Cooper didn’t stop there. “And when Everest ripped the fake mark off my body, all I felt was relief and hope. Dangerous, lethal hope that somehow it could still somehow be you?—”

“Stop.” My legs trembled and threatened to give out. I swallowed through a hot lump in my throat. “Just stop saying this?—”

“And when I came out of that damned castle, despite the war raging in front of me, I looked right to you as if it was somehow going to give me what I wanted. And when it didn’t happen, I felt as ripped raw as the day I held your dead body on that beach.”

“Why are you telling me this?” I screamed, my voice burning a path up my throat.

Something snapped inside of him, some kind of barrier he’d kept up just vanished. “Because I love you.”

I choked on the gasp I made. My body turned ice-cold.

He didn’t stand or raise his voice. He just stared at me like I was his whole world and spoke softly. “I’m in love with you, Savannah Grace, and every single moment I look at you and don’t see the glyph on your body marking you as mine makes me wish I’d walked through that tunnel into the light so I wouldn’t have to feel like this anymore.”

That did it. He’d destroyed what was left of my heart right then and there. I buried my face in my hands and sobbed, whispering, “ Stop, stop, stop .”

“Why? Why not tell you how I feel? Why not tell you this is killing me as much as it’s killing you?”

I didn’t look at him. I couldn’t. “Because there’s nothing we can do about it. It doesn’t matter if I love you, you’re not mine to keep.”

“ You can be mine for now, ” he whispered.

I jumped and dropped my hands to look at him. “What did you say?”

“I’m saying be mine now while you can.”

Despite these words piercing new holes in my heart, I heard myself let out a deranged sounding laugh. “And sign my heart up for slaughter when your soulmate shows up for real?”

He stared at me for a second, then narrowed those beautiful green eyes. “Is your heart not dying a little bit each day right now?”

I shook my head. “Never date a Bishop, that’s the rule. Bishops always get a soulmate?—”

“Or die before they get one.”

My stomach turned. “What does that mean? You’re not dying.”

“I already died, Savannah. Asmodeus killed me. You and Riah brought me back.” He licked his lips and stared at the ground. When he spoke again, his voice was soft, like even he didn’t want to hear it. “ What if that death was my destiny, and therefore I was never a soulmate. What if my soul has always been only mine, never shared with another person ?”

I shivered. “Bentley said?—”

“Bentley was a child. An innocent child who’d spent the majority of his life with Tegan. There’s a reason he’s as devious as her. What if Bentley knows I’m going to die without a soulmate, and he just said that to give me hope or something?”

Oh God, no. I can’t even THINK that. I can’t. My heart can’t handle that idea. Tears pooled in my eyes, then slid down my cheeks. I licked my lips and tasted the saltiness. “What if he wasn’t lying and your soulmate is coming still?”

He shrugged. “I won’t know until either I die or she shows up, and I don’t want to live like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like I’m hoping it’s death because being marked for someone else feels worse.”

I exhaled and rested my head against the door. “You’re just saying that right now. When she comes, you’ll be happy. Look at Tenn’s parents. I’ve heard the story. She was in love with Julian and then Micah came and she’d never been happier.”

“And from what I’ve heard she always loved Julian.”

“And Julian suffered so badly he tried to kill children?—”

“Years later. After the deaths of the only family Julian had left. It doesn’t matter that that wasn’t the truth, it was the truth to Julian.” He ran his hand through his short blond hair. “Besides, Julian was blindsided by Micah. He didn’t know he was going to lose her.”

My eyebrows rose. “Knowing I’m going to lose you is supposed to make it easier?”

His eyes glistened like he was fighting back tears. “Nothing’s going to make this easier, Savannah. Nothing.”

“Then why are you here saying things you shouldn’t?”

“Because this already hurts more than we can bear. Doesn’t it?”

I nodded and tears splashed onto my chest.

He pressed his hands to his chest, right over his heart. “So I’m here because . . . because if I’m going to suffer the pain of you, then I deserve the chance to love you. For however long I’m allowed to. So that when I lose you, I'll have happy memories to go with the nightmares. Either way, you will haunt me for the rest of my days. No matter who comes, no matter how happy a soulmate might make me in the future, I will always have a part of me that will wish it was you.”

I just stared, my chest a hollow crevice my heart used to live in.

He stood up and crossed the room to stand in front of me, close enough for me to smell his soap. He ducked his head to meet my eyes. “So, let me repeat myself, in case you need to hear it again . . . I love you, Savannah Grace. And I want to be yours whether it’s for one week, one month, one year, or one decade . . . I want it and I’m done fighting it. I’ll let you think about it, but I’m here and I’m yours . . . for as long as you’ll let me.”

He reached down and turned the door handle, pulling the door open.

“ Kiwi ,” I heard myself whisper, staring into his green eyes just inches from my own.

He froze.

This was a bad idea. The worst ever. I would never recover from this. Being Cooper Bishop’s girl for now was going to be the death of me forever. But he wasn’t wrong either. I already was suffering. I already broke for him. Whether we dated or not, the end result was intense, suffocating pain. The only difference was whether or not we had happiness at all. He made good points. If we let ourselves love each other for now, maybe losing him would hurt less. I couldn’t see how it could possibly hurt any more.

I took a deep breath. “ Kiwi ,” I whispered again.

He gave me a soft, half-little smile as he reached up and took my chin between his fingers. “It’s up to you, ma’am. I will respect your decision if this is not something you can handle. I just wanted you to know how I feel.”

I reached out and fisted his shirt in my hands, pulling him flush against my body. “You just want to be happy together . . . for as long as we can be?”

“If we can’t have happily ever after, then I want to have happily for now. ” His gaze swept over my face. “Let me love you. Let me make you happy while I can. We’ve both died and come back to life. We know better than anyone else how fragile mortality is?—”

“I love you,” I whispered, and his eyes widened. I pushed up on my tiptoes and met his wide stare. Then I nodded. “For now . . . for us.”

The smile that spread across his face took my breath away. He cupped my face in his hands. “For now. For us.”