"That's not important. It's not … don't worry about it."
This time when Nash looked at me, his large hands moved to the back of his neck, rubbing hard, as though he needed to release the tension that had grown there. "It's damn well important to me, Will."
I wanted to smile at him then. I wanted Nash to open his arms and tell me he loved me. I wanted him to admit he believed me … that he simply believed in things he couldn't see, things that didn't make sense to the logical mind at all. But he had let me just walk away. He didn't try to fight, he didn't try to think outside the box he'd put himself in. He'd turned his back when coincidences couldn't be explained. Worse yet, he'd accused me of trying to trick him, even though he had felt the very same things I had. Those dreams were memories-we shared them. Even if we didn't understand how, they meant something, and rather than being amazed, he'd run from them. From the truth. He'd run from me.
I tried one last time.
"Why, Nash? Why is it important to you?"
Say it, I thought. Please. Tell me you love me. Say, 'Because of everything' and mean it.
"I'd … damn … " Nash shrugged, looking uncomfortable, looking a lot like a kid standing in front of a grown up being asked to explain why he'd misbehaved. But Nash wasn't a kid. No matter if he'd acted like one often enough. He took to rubbing his neck again before he dropped his hand, smiling, but with no conviction. "I'd hate to see you go. The place would be too quiet without the noise you make and then there's the cupcakes … "
He stopped joking when I lowered my shoulders, gripping my keys in my hand as I stepped back into the street, meaning to yank the door of my car open to show just how angry I was. I heard the first syllables of my name come from his mouth, then screams to my left, the screech of tires and the blast of a horn. The stench of street tar was all around me, thick and metallic, heavy and cloying. The smell, it was awful and still it enveloped me, poured up into my sinuses and wound its way inside my head, and for a second, I let the smell take me …
Sookie gripped the chain tight and I wanted to stop her. I wanted to kill my father, kill them all, all the damn fools that had started this. They screamed about the rain, the flood that came out in the river. They cursed Sookie, they cursed her mama like it had been their fault for running from the threat when it came. Fools, fucking fools, all of them.
She looked down at me from so high above, and I read my name on her lips. I wanted to catch her. I wanted to go with her into the smoke. I wanted …
She dropped fast. I ran. Sylv did. We tried to catch her. But she was too far away.
We tried to stop the world from spinning.
It went on and on and part of me died with her.
I loved her. My first love. That love had lived, it always would. Inside my veins. Inside my blood. For one brilliant moment in time, that loved lived.
She went pale before the baby came. Like she knew. My darlin' Riley had known it could happen. Her body was a thin thing, not like her heart. Not like her spirit. Sometimes a body isn't built for a spirit that is bigger than the world itself. Sometimes it fails and sometimes that failing destroys the world. It wrecked mine.
She was weak, they told me. There had been too much blood loss.
The baby had come and he was a soldier, a strong champion that grew and lived with the same fire his mama had.
But Riley was pale when I saw her. She hadn't the strength to lift her head from the pillow. Couldn't even hold the baby when they brought him in.
"You do it. Please."
I took my boy, stronger than his mama, stronger, if I'm honest, than I was just then and I held him because my darlin' asked me to. I held him close and let him lay beside her wondering if she knew him. Praying she did. Believing she would.
"Riley?"
She'd been too pale. Too damn pale and those eyes slid closed. Dear lord, how I loved her. How I loved her so. That love had lived, it always would. Inside my veins. Inside my blood. For one brilliant moment in time, that loved lived.
I loved her. It came to me alongside with Sookie's fear and Isaac bottomless sorrow. It came to me when Willow fell, when her keys hit the street and got crushed beneath the metal wheel of the tar truck. It came to me as I shot forward, as I grabbed her and held her away from the noise and chaos behind us.
With everything inside my veins, inside my blood, I loved her.
Nash
"I'm sorry. Oh sweet God, Will. I'm so sorry."
It didn't matter. The crowd, the worried onlookers who huddled around us, the construction crew all sweaty from work and fear, the movers, unused to such drama in their normally mundane lives. All I saw was the color coming back to her face. All I felt was the death grip of her fingers on my collar. "Willow, I'm so sorry." I could say it a million times and it wouldn't be enough. None of it. "Please, forgive me."