“Harder?” Anger rose, as did her voice. “You don’t want me to make it harder? I thought you died two nights ago! I thought you died and that I’d never see you again. Then you show up here, looking so damned handsome and healthy and are happy and charming and loving and we have the best night of my life and you give me this perfect memory, then tell me not to make it harder—” Her breath hitched as the truth dawned.
More tears welled in her eyes and spilled over her lashes. Pain inundated her. “You wanted to give me the perfect memory,” she whispered.
His throat worked in a swallow. “Yes.”
“Cliff,” she murmured, both a thank-you and a plea.
This hadn’t just been about what he needed. It had been about what he’d known she needed, too. He hadn’t wanted her last memory of him to be what it would’ve been if he hadn’t come tonight: him standing before her, eyes glowing, face full of anguish and self-loathing and—yes—suffering as he told her I can’t be like this anymore.
He’d wanted her last memory of him to be a good one, a loving one she could hold close and cherish in his absence.
Biting back a sob, she spun around, yanked the door open, and left the house.
“Emma,” Cliff called after her.
Ignoring him, she hurried down the steps and stomped across the grass toward the car parked beside hers in the driveway.
The driver’s door opened and Bastien stepped out.
“Did you know?” she demanded. “Did you know he was coming here to tell me goodbye?”
His jaw clenched. “I suspected it.”
“Well, you need to talk him out of it. Whatever he has planned, you need to talk him out of it, Bastien.”
“I can’t,” he said, face grim.
“That’s bullshit.”
“I can’t,” he repeated. “It’s his choice, Emma.”
“A choice he made before he went into battle to rescue you.” She jabbed him in the chest. “You and Melanie and Aidan and everyone else who was captured. He went there to save your asses, and he did. He led all of your immortal brethren safely through those fucking booby traps, suffering injury after injury so they wouldn’t and could rescue you.” Again she poked him. “He saved you. Now you need to save him.”
Cliff spoke softly behind her. “He can’t save me, Emma.”
“Bullshit.” She shifted so she could see them both. “He can and he will.”
“No, he can’t.” The certainty in Cliff’s words pierced her like a knife.
She stood there in the silence that fell, her heart breaking, absolutely devastated. “So… what? You’re going to wait for the sun to rise and let it burn you to death?” Was that why he’d stayed longer than usual?
“No.”
She looked at Bastien. “You’re going to decapitate him?”
“If he asks me to, I will.”
She stared at Bastien helplessly. “How can you do that? He’s your friend.”
His throat worked in a swallow. “That’s why I can do it.”
“He isn’t going to decapitate me,” Cliff said. “He won’t have to.”
So Cliff intended to take his own life?
She didn’t know why that seemed worse, but it did. Emma took a step toward him. “Cliff, honey, you don’t have to do this. Look how much better you are tonight. If you just give it a little more time—”
“I don’t have more time.”
“I know you’re worried this lucidity won’t last, that things will get bad again, but—”
“I don’t have more time, Emma,” he repeated. “Even if I wanted more time…” He shook his head. “I’m all out of it. It’s over.”
He almost sounded as if he did want more time, that he wasn’t ready to give up the fight, that the choice wasn’t his.
“I don’t understand.”
Closing the distance between them, he took her hands. “Something happened at the base.”
She stared up at him. Something other than him nearly dying? “What do you mean?”
“When I triggered the fail-safes…” He squeezed her hands, then shook his head. “Some of the blades that cut me and stabbed me were coated with chemicals. Melanie thinks most of it was the tranquilizer. But they found poison on some.”
“Poison doesn’t affect vampires and immortals,” she said.
“This one does.”
From the corner of her eye, she saw Bastien take a step toward them. “What?”
“Emma,” Cliff said, holding her gaze. “The poison cured me.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
It took a moment for Emma’s beleaguered mind to catch up with what Cliff was trying to tell her.
She sucked in a breath. “You mean… you think the poison destroyed the virus?” she asked in a whisper. The fear that had consumed her