She sighed. “I know that.”
“Then what’s wrong?”
I stood next to Emma, wondering if this would be the last time. If it wasn’t this moment, it would be one very soon. Every ache that throbbed in my body was a big countdown clock to my departure. Did she know it? Could she feel it, too?
“We shouldn’t be talking about this right now. We should be talking about what skank you’re going to take to prom, or which stupid Steven Seagal movie you plan on torturing me with this weekend, or that art festival you promised to take me to this summer. Not this…”
“Em—”
“I don’t want you to leave me,” she whispered. “I feel like you’re giving up. I feel like I should be doing something, but I don’t know what to do.”
The double meaning in her words created a lump in my throat. Emma had been such a big part of me for so long, I wasn’t sure what would happen to either of us when you took that other half away. I didn’t want to know.
“I’m not giving up,” I said. “I don’t really have a choice. And this is not on you, Em. There is nothing you can do. There’s not even anything I can do anymore.”
I wrapped my arm around her shoulders. They felt fragile even under my weak grasp. Everything about this moment felt fragile. The ocean of unspoken words between us. The memories colliding and collapsing inside both of our heads.
The way my vision was going black around the edges. Wait…
I stumbled back and grabbed on to the white wicker dresser behind me when my legs started to give.
The room tilted off-balance. Out of the corner of my eye a shadow demon perched on the nightstand, grinning. No…
“Cash!” Emma’s hands were on me in a second, but I didn’t need her. I needed Anaya. Was this it?
God please no…please don’t let this be it. Anaya needs to be here.
I wasn’t sure when I’d made that decision, but in that moment, I knew without a doubt that it was her I wanted to see on the other side of this. Not Noah. Not a horde of shadow demons. Just Anaya and all her light, even if she was hiding something from me. Good or bad, I felt like I belonged with her.
She felt like home.
“Not yet, Cash,” Emma’s words sounded choked. “Not now, damn it.”
I vaguely noticed her fumbling with her phone to dial 911. Pain flared in my insides. The darkness spread across my vision, blocking out that last little bit of light I was clinging to.
This was it.
Well…shit. Happy birthday to me.
Chapter 21
Anaya
Watching Cash sleep was peaceful.
Watching Cash sleep knowing he might not wake up was torture.
I could have lost him. If he had died, the shadows would have… I didn’t even want to imagine what they would’ve done to him. What they would have used him for. I felt sick just thinking about it. I walked through the dim hospital room, lit by monitors and the one fluorescent light that glowed above
Cash’s bed, and stopped at the door. I wanted to go back and crawl in beside him to keep him warm, but Emma’s voice dueling with the doctors on the other side of the door stopped me.
“What do you mean you don’t know what’s wrong with him?” she said. “This is a hospital. You’re a doctor!”
“You don’t understand.” The doctor’s voice lowered as if he were trying to coax hers to do the same. “His organs are failing. His lungs are filling with fluid. No human should still be alive and be at the body temperature he’s holding. We know what’s happening. We just can’t figure out why. We’re still waiting on some test results to come back, so you just need to be patient. Stay calm for your friend.”
Finn murmured something to Emma I couldn’t quite hear through the door. I wanted to step through, but I couldn’t leave Cash. Not even for a second. I could smell the shadow demons lurking just beneath the surface. Hungry. Waiting.
“In the meantime…is there anyone you can call?” the doctor said. “Any family that might want to say good-bye?”
Emma made a choked sound and Finn’s voice broke in.
“How long?”
“It’s hard to tell,” the doctor’s gruff voice said. “Nothing about his condition is anything we’ve ever seen. And he won’t allow us to operate. I’d say we’re looking at a week. Maybe two if things continue to progress the way they are now.”
Emma burst into sobs and I stepped away from the door. This didn’t have to be happening. This could’ve happened quickly. He could be at peace right now. This was all because of me. How… how did I let this happen? How could I have been so selfish? I may be earning my way back to Tarik, but would I be the girl he remembered when I got there? Would I still feel the same when it was him standing in front of me and not Cash?
“You’re late,” Cash croaked from behind me. I turned around, but he didn’t try to get up. He just lay there, buried in the hollow of a blanket.
“I know.” He patted the spot beside him. I sank down onto the edge of the bed and did my best to produce a smile for him. “Happy birthday.”
He rolled his eyes and pushed the hair off his forehead. “Yeah, real happy. I thought for sure this was it this time.”
Cash stared at the door, lips pressed together, listening to Emma lose it in every way outside the door.
“I don’t want her here,” he said. “I don’t want her to see me like this. She’s already been through enough.”
“I don’t think you’re going to get rid of her,” I said. “Besides, she’s stronger than you give her credit for. And she’s got Finn now. She won’t be alone.”
Cash nodded and closed his eyes.
“You look a little better,” I said, studying the hard edge of his jaw under the fluorescent light. They had taken the piercings out of his eyebrow and ears. I was guessing the one in his mouth was gone, too. Lying there in nothing but a plain hospital gown, he looked stripped of everything Cash.
He grinned, eyes closed. “Liar.”
I placed my hand over his and a shiver vibrated through him. I started to pull away, but he reached over and grabbed my hand to hold it in place. “It feels nice.”
I let my eyelids slide shut, ignoring the warmth starting to burn at my hip. The call of someone waiting for me to give them what I’d refused to give him.
“Anaya,” Cash said. When I opened my eyes, his gaze was fixed on my face, his dark eyes begging for something unspoken. “I need you to show me.”
“Show you what?”
“Everything,” he said. “Something. Don’t send me to the other side not knowing who I was. I want to know. I have a right to know.”
“Cash…”
“I know you can. You just don’t want to.”
I sighed and stroked the back of his wrist with my fingers. “What if you don’t like what you see?
You have enough reasons to hate me, Cash. I’d rather not add another.”
“I don’t hate you,” he said, sitting up. “Is that what you think? That I hate you for this?”
I ignored his eyes trying to catch mine and instead focused on a table across the room. Condensation slipped down the side of a pink plastic pitcher of water. “You should.”
Cash grabbed my chin and forced me to face him. “I don’t.”
He took a deep breath, his chest swelling, rising with life. “And I won’t hate you for whatever I see.
No matter what it is. I swear.”
I was on the verge of breaking. Of giving him what he wanted. How could I deny him? He deserved everything from me after what I’d stolen. I looked into Cash’s wide brown eyes. So kind. A soul that kind couldn’t have anything dark enough to be afraid of.
“What if I close my eyes and wake up as something else? Someone else?” he said, squeezing my warm fingers with his cold ones. “Show me. Please.”