The trees rustled around them, and Luce noticed the faintest trickle of a shadow out of the corner of her eye. Not the sick, all-consuming swirl of blackness from the bar last night, but a warning. The shadow was keeping its distance, seething coldly around the corner, but it was waiting. For her. Luce felt a deep chill, down in her bones. She couldn't shake the sensation that something colossal, black as night, something final was on its way.
"I'm sorry," she said, dragging her eyes back to Daniel. "Could you, um, say that again?"
"I get to live forever," he repeated. Luce was still lost, but he kept talking, a stream of words pouring out of his mouth. "I get to live, and to watch babies being born, and grow up, and fall in love. I watch them have babies of their own and grow old. I watch them die. I am condemned, Luce, to watch it all over again and again. Everyone but you." His eyes were glassy. His voice dropped to a whisper. "You don't get to fall in love - "
"But ...," she whispered back. "I've ... fallen in love."
"You don't get to have babies and grow old, Luce."
"Why not?"
"You come along every seventeen years."
"Please - "
"We meet. We always meet, somehow we're always thrown together, no matter where I go, no matter how I try to distance myself from you. It never matters. You always find me."
He was staring down at his clenched fists now, looking like he wanted to hit something, unable to raise his eyes.
"And every time we meet, you fall for me - "
"Daniel - "
"I can resist you or flee from you or try my hardest not to respond to you, but it makes no difference. You fall in love with me, and I with you."
"Is that so terrible?"
"And it kills you."
"Stop it!" she cried. "What are you trying to do? Scare me away?"
"No." He snorted. "It wouldn't work, anyway."
"If you don't want to be with me ...," she said, hoping that it was all an elaborate joke, a breakup speech to end all breakup speeches, and not the truth. It could not be the truth, "... there's probably a more believable story to tell."
"I know you can't believe me. This is why I couldn't tell you until now, when I have to tell you. Because I thought I understood the rules and ... we kissed, and now I don't understand anything."
His words from the night before came back to her: I don't know how to stop it. I don't know what to do.
"Because you kissed me."
He nodded.
"You kissed me and when we were done, you were surprised."
He nodded again, having the grace to look a little sheepish.
"You kissed me," Luce continued, searching for a way to put it all together, "and you thought I wasn't going to survive it?"
"Based on previous experience," he said hoarsely. "Yes."
"That's just crazy," she said.
"It's not about the kiss this time, it's about what it means. In some lives we can kiss, but in most we can't." He stroked her cheek, and she wrestled with how good it felt. "I must say, I prefer the lives where we can kiss." He looked down. "Though it does make losing you that much harder."
She wanted to be mad at him. For making up such a bizarre story when they should have been locked in an embrace. But something was there, like an itch at the back of her mind, telling her not to run from Daniel now, but to stick around and listen as long as she could.
"When you lose me," she said, feeling out the shape of the word in her mouth. "How does it happen?
Why?"
"It depends on you, on how much you can see about our past, on how well you've come to know me, who I am." He tossed his hands up in a shrug. "I know this sounds incredibly - "
"Crazy?"
He smiled. "I was going to say vague. But I'm trying not to hide anything from you. It's just a very, very delicate subject. Sometimes, in the past, just talking like this has ..." She watched for the shape of the words on his lips, but he wouldn't say anything.
"Killed me?"
"I was going to say 'broken my heart.'"
He was in obvious pain, and Luce wanted to comfort him. She could feel herself drawn, something in her breast tugging her forward. But she couldn't. That was when she felt certain that Daniel knew