Meet Me in the Middle

Honestly, you little brat," Arianna said, carefully putting the finishing touches on my splint, "if I'd known you were going to be so high maintenance, I wouldn't have agreed to be your roommate."

I smiled, my teeth gritted against the pain. "I love you, too, Ar."

"And you're an idiot, by the way. If you had let me talk to you, I would have explained that I took the liberty of putting together applications for you to American University and George Washington University, both of which are a quick train trip away from Georgetown."

"You-what?"

"And if those don't work out, I'm more than willing to use my vampire tricks on an admissions officer. Just because I can't have a life doesn't mean I'm going to let you be so stupid about yours. You can thank me later."

I stared, shocked. I didn't know what to say. I'd been so set on Georgetown, I'd never been willing to think of other options. I was beyond touched that Arianna had been watching out for me like that.

Of course, being close to Lend might not matter anymore.

"Are you sure you don't want to go to the hospital right now?" Raquel's eyes were still tight with worry. She'd come immediately to David's house when Jack told her I was gone. They sat now, shoulder to shoulder.

"It can wait until tomorrow."

Raquel heaved a why must you be so stubborn sigh, then shook her head. "I can't believe it about Jack. We'll be on the lookout for him; if we catch him, the iron cells will hold him. The little demon can't make doors there. Speaking of which, I'm still not sure how you got out of the Paths alone."

"I don't know. Reth and Jack both said you had to have a sense of the place you wanted to go, have a connection to it. For Reth it was names; for Jack it was seeing it before. For me it was-" I blushed, looking over at Lend, who sat next to me, but not touching-me-next-to-me. "Well, it was you. All of you. Once I focused on memories of you, I sort of felt my way here."

Arianna looked confused. Admittedly they had a lot to take in, between the whole Jack-is-a-psychopath-who-wanted-me-to-destroy-a-species thing, and also the turns-out-I'm-less-human-than-we-thought thing. Lend stayed silent the whole time, which made me increasingly nervous. Was he going to be awkward around me now? I still loved him, I always would, and I'd do whatever he wanted with our relationship, but this whole not-touching-not-talking thing was gonna have to end.

Okay, so maybe I wasn't quite ready to let him go.

Okay, I'd probably never be ready to let him go.

Arianna frowned. "But when you were stuck in the Paths, why didn't you call that one faerie, your father? Didn't Reth tell you his name?"

My jaw dropped. "Bleep. Wow. It didn't even cross my mind." I couldn't believe how stupid I was, ready to rot and die on the paths when I knew a faerie name other than homicidal Fehl's. But that meant something, too. When it came down to it, I didn't even think of my "father" or where I came from. I thought of the people I had, the people who meant something to me.

So that whole faerie parentage thing? Screw it. Knowing where I came from didn't change who I was. My stupid father could rot in the Faerie Realms for the rest of eternity. He was nothing to me.

And I most definitely wasnot nothing.

Too bad I couldn't have figured that out before destroying my relationship with the love of my life. I had messed everything up, so fixated on trying to create my ideal of a life and so paranoid about losing Lend and being hurt that I sabotaged myself. I looked over at Lend, wishing he'd do something, say something.

As if in answer, he stood and held out his hand. "Can we go for a walk?"

"Sure!" I let him help me up, unsure whether or not I could keep holding his hand. But he didn't let go as he led me outside and down the path toward the pond. He stopped abruptly halfway there.

"I can't-" His face twisted somewhere between anger and sadness. "I can't believe you didn't tell me. Why?"

I couldn't stand to look at his face, so I studied the blanket of dead leaves on the ground. "You're the most important person in my life, the best thing that's ever happened to me. And I kind of hate that, how much I love you. Because I've been left a lot in my life, and loving you meant that it'd happen again. The thought of watching you drift away, become someone like your mom who couldn't love me anymore-it's easier to get it over with sooner. It won't kill me now, I don't think, but it might later. And I'm sorry, I should have told you, but I thought if you didn't know we could make it work somehow. You always made me feel warm, forget the emptiness. It was selfish, and it wasn't fair of me. Everyone deserves to know what they are."

"Evie-you-GAH!" Lend shouted, and I looked up at him, surprised. He had both hands clenched into fists and was staring up at the sky. After a few seconds he looked back at me, all the anger gone from his face. "I'm not an immortal."

"But I saw-"

"I know what you saw, and I'm sure you were right, but being immortal doesn't make me an immortal. Don't treat me like I'm my mom. She's always been that way-she can't be any other way. She doesn't grow, she doesn't change. Are you saying that I'm the same?"

"Of course not!"

"Then don't act like I have no choice! I've never wanted that life, that world. And I know I'll have to decide what to do someday, but bleep, Evie, I'm eighteen! I don't have to face forever for a long time yet."

"But you will, eventually."

He rolled his eyes. "You act like I'm gonna pack my bags and jump in the nearest river next week. Which would be a terrible idea because I have a huge paper due. That isn't my world. This is. And I'm going to live out my life the way I want to. Which is by getting a degree, and making leaps and strides in cryptozoology, and having kids, and being ridiculously conventional aside from helping take care of paranormal creatures and being able to shape-shift. And I am going to do all that, every minute of it, with the girl that I love, who is going to promise to always be truthful with me about everything from now on so that I can actually be there for her."

I blinked back tears. This was exactly what I wanted to hear, what I hadn't dared hope I would hear. But he didn't know. How could he be sure? "What if you change your mind? I don't even know how long I'm going to live."

He stepped forward to close the distance between us as he rested his forehead against mine. "The only life I want is one with you. I don't understand this gap you see between us, but can't you meet me somewhere in the middle?"

"The middle of what?"

"I don't know, the middle of tomorrow and forever, the middle of life and death, the middle of normal and paranormal. Where we've always been."

I bit my lip, nodding against his forehead. "There's a place for us there, right?"

"Always." He put his lips to mine, sealing our own little spot in the world. Together.