********************
It was well past midnight before I was finally able to let Tristan out of my closet. Getting rid of Amelie and Corinne had been difficult. They’d been made to look pretty incompetent by my little escape to find Darren, and were now hesitant to let me out of their sight for any reason—even sleep.
But that was nothing compared to what was coming.
Tristan smiled warmly as he stepped into my bedroom. In an instant, he was in front of me, and had pulled me close. “How soon can you be ready?”
“I’m not going anywhere, Tristan.”
He looked confused. “But you said— Isn’t that why you healed me?”
I dropped my head. “I just didn’t want you to die,” I replied in a small voice. It was selfish and I knew that, but I needed Tristan alive. I couldn’t imagine the world without him.
“How could you be that cruel, Ana? I love you.” He shook his head. “I thought you’d decided to run away with me—that we could be together one last time. I can protect you from Daemon. The only reason I wanted you to move on was because I didn’t expect to ever see you again.”
Hearing the ache in his words pained me. It had been cruel to lie to him. But what else could I have done, let him give up? I needed to explain my decision to him. I just prayed that he understood.
“Tristan, the girl you’re in love with isn’t me. Not anymore. I do feel what you feel, that longing, that connection between us, but it’s not my love Tristan, and it’s not our connection. I didn’t know the difference at first, not until I opened myself up to Darren… I—I’m sorry.”
Tristan had been shaking his head as I spoke. As I’d dreaded, he wasn’t going to accept my decision easily. “You just have to remember the good times,” he said. “That’s all it’ll take. I’ve made mistakes. I don’t deserve your forgiveness—or your love for that matter. I’ve always known that… You—you said that you’d received some of your memories; surely, you can see that I haven’t always been so manipulative. The memory of what we were, of what we can be again, it still lives in me. To kill that is to kill me, Ana.”
The grief in his words stirred up a hurt in me so severe I had to sit down. I couldn’t look at him anymore. I was so very terrible at delivering bad news. Having steeled myself for his resistance, only to have that fade, I changed the subject. “You knew that this was the last life I would get, didn’t you?”
He nodded. “I used to wonder about how many times they’d let you come back. You told me once that your “last chance” reincarnation would be noticeably different from all the others. Well, this is the fastest you’ve ever come back and your face is the same as Lexy’s. But even before I met you as Ana, I knew the next reincarnation would be your last—what Lexy and I tried to do, I knew it would make the other angels furious. I promised you that once you reached your final lifetime I would stay away from you. I couldn’t. If I had the willpower, I would have, I swear to you. But you’re everything to me.”
The guilt was eating me alive. I could only stare at my feet, wishing things were different—that somehow I could give him what he needed and still be true to Darren—that my purpose for being here wasn’t to cause his death.
With his hand, he took my face. “Choose me, Ana. Let me have the next twelve months. The angels, they always give you until your seventeenth birthday to decide. When that day approaches, I’ll leave—I’ll take care of Daemon myself. Then you and Darren can be happy for the rest of your lives. Let’s have Neverland one last time… You may have his heart, but you have my entire soul. I know you felt it when we kissed.”
He was right. I did feel it. The kiss was blissful. That powerful yearning had never truly dulled. It probably never would. Part of me was—would always be the girl he fell in love with, only, that part of me wasn’t Ana. Even though we shared the same soul and some of the same feelings, having separate sets of memories essentially made us different people. Even having Aleksandra’s memories didn’t change that. All but the earliest of her memories of Tristan were partial and incomplete; after she’d gotten her memories, so much of who she was and what they talked about depended upon happenings from previous lifetimes—which I didn’t have access to in my mind. Memories are what make us up. “I can’t,” I told Tristan. “I have feelings for Darren.”
He closed his eyes. “Then you should have let me die, because without you…what’s the point? You can’t ask me to live if you take away the reason I have for living.”
“Stop saying that, Tristan.”
“Stop saying that? Ana, everyone I’ve ever cared about is gone—everyone except you.”
That was too much. I was the reason Aiden and Surya were dead. I’d left him with no one and nothing and now I was saying goodbye? He turned and I called to him. “I’m sorry. Tell me how I can make this right. I don’t wanna leave things like this. I don’t want to hurt either of you—I don’t know what to do. I care about you Tristan, I do, but…” Finally, in the midst of a hurricane of emotions, I broke down.
He appeared in front me, steadying my body with his hands. He kissed my forehead and spoke gently. “I am sorry, Ana. This isn’t how I want you to remember me. Remember that I loved you. Please… even if that’s all you ever remember—remember that.” He let another moment pass before he spoke his next words. “This really is goodbye then.”
I swallowed before speaking. “Where will you go?”
“To find Daemon. Your purpose may be to kill him, but that doesn’t mean the people around you will be safe. Or even that you’ll survive the encounter. If I can end this, then your destiny will be secure. I won’t fail you, Ana. Not again. Fear nothing.”
My mind connected the dots. “That was your plan all along wasn’t it? Why you suggested we run away for only a year. You were planning to leave, to destroy Daemon yourself, before my seventeenth birthday came. That’s how you were going to force me to stay on the path to heaven. I was right about the “bad thing,” it was my short life span, but you didn’t keep that from me so that I would die without asking for more time, you kept it from me because it wouldn’t apply to me anymore, not after you sacrificed yourself by killing him. I was so angry with you…it’s the reason I decided to give Darren a chance. I’m so sorry.” I was looking down again. “You’re always trying to protect me...” I whispered.
He forced a smile. “Maybe I shouldn’t have underestimated your detective skills after all.”
Another wordless moment passed, both of us lost in thought. I was wondering what tonight might have been like if we had never went to the beach that night, if I had never told him about my getting memories.
“Ana?” he asked.
“Yes?”
“Do you truly love him?”
I dropped my eyes before meeting his again. I nodded.
Defeat and acceptance settled into those stunning green eyes and my heart nearly broke anew. “Then ensuring your safety will be my one reason for living. I won’t fail in that.”
He made another move to leave.
“I’ll…I’ll miss you,” I said. My goal tonight was to make him understand that I was choosing Darren. Only, succeeding in that made me feel like a failure in everything else. Choosing another boy while he gave up his life to keep me safe wasn’t okay. It wasn’t fair to him at all. None of this was. He deserved so much more than I did.
“Then think of Nadia,” he replied. “I pray that if your memories ever do return, that her memory might bring you some comfort. I didn’t deserve you. Goodbye, my love.”
“Nadia…” spoke London’s voice in my head. The world around me began to fade until suddenly I was lying in bed, with Tristan in front of me. My stomach was large; I was pregnant, and he had his hands on me, trying to feel the baby kick. There was a joy in me unlike I had ever
experienced, a contentment, a feeling of fulfillment. I looked into his smiling face and said, “If for any reason we ever drift apart, or if I’m just plain angry with you, remind me of this moment, of the happiness that I feel right here, right now.”
He gave me a full smile. “I’ll hold you to that.”
I laughed and slid my hand over his. “I know you were against having a baby, Tristan. I just wanted to give you something, a piece of me to have after I’m gone. I know it’s hard for you when I’m not here, so baby Nadia—I’m certain it’s a girl, no matter what you say—will be here for you.”
The memory shifted and now I was alone in my bed. I had a craving for some strawberries and though I could hear Tristan’s warning in my mind, reminding me that the doctor had ordered me to remain in bed, I got up anyway. As I tried to take on the stairs, my foot slipped and I tumbled down the staircase. I was with the doctor when I woke up. He took a hold of my hand and told me that I’d lost the baby.
Again, the memory shifted. I was waiting for Tristan to come home now and I found myself terrified of how angry he would be. I knew that there weren’t enough words to say that I was sorry for losing his child, it was unforgivable. I had finally done the thing to push him away—to change the way he felt about me. As I soon as I saw him I burst into tears, I could tell by the pain in his face that someone had already told him what happened.
Tristan came over and laid his arms around me. “Now, Nadia will be my gift to you. When our forever finally does end, and you are able to ascend to a place that I cannot follow, she’ll be there waiting for you. And if you should ever find yourself lonely or missing me, then you will always have a piece of me in her.”
It was the moment when I realized that his love was unconditional and that he would never leave me. I vowed then, to make myself his forever.
When the memory was over, Tristan was gone. Instead, it was London who faced me now. Her wings were bright and lit up my face and room.
“Why?” I asked. “I don’t understand. I did what you wanted. I said goodbye to him.”
London looked at me with sympathy in her eyes. “Too little, too late. Bringing Tristan here was a test of your commitment to your purpose—all you had to do was let him go. The others would have been satisfied with that. But you failed and now they’ve lost faith in you. We’ve done so much to make this easier and still you chose him.” She sighed and shook her head. “You’ll be on your own now. They won’t let me help you anymore. I can only remind you that the future’s already been laid out. Only two paths are available, and both will ultimately yield the same result. Either you will fail and watch Darren die, or you will succeed and see Tristan dead because of it. That’s your choice now. It didn’t have to be like this, you were supposed to do the right thing. I made it so easy for you, Ana.”
“I just couldn’t,” I replied.
“I know,” she answered sadly. “If no one knows, I do. It has been a privilege to share these lives with you. You will always hold a place in my heart no matter what happens next.”
I wasn’t looking for a goodbye. I wanted to know why she’d done this to me. “I didn’t want to remember, London. I was happy the way I was.”
“I care too much about you to let you face what’s coming unprepared. Daemon’s given the order, Ana. The vampires are coming… by the thousands. You need to be ready. Tough times are ahead. You’ve only got three days…”
With that, the room darkened, and London looked human again. She put her arms around me and images began to flash in my head of all the faces she’d worn during our many lifetimes together. Wiping tears from her eyes, she said goodbye for the final time, and then waved to me as she disappeared into a flash of light.
Without hesitation, I reached out to Tristan. “You said once that I was your Wendy, and that you were my Peter Pan. You told me that you would never grow old, and that you would never stop searching for my window, wherever it might be the next time. We’d continue to have our adventures, our own personal Neverland. Well here I am Tristan, find me one last time.”
I had only waited minutes before he swept onto my balcony. His eyes were wide and hopeful and he took my hands. “How much do you remember?” he asked.
“Absolutely everything,” I replied. “Let’s have Neverland for one last night.”
He smiled, and I could feel the tension in his soul ease.
I was still Ana, only there was so much more to me now. That initial fear that I’d expressed to London was dissipating as I stared into Tristan’s eyes. Understanding was taking its place. It was as though I had never truly known myself before, and I guess I hadn’t. My other incarnations didn’t seem so strange and foreign anymore, they were just me in a slightly different light. And I could remember things—events that I’d read about in history class and places that no longer existed—back to the beginning of time. I could remember the indescribable wonder that was heaven. I could also remember my heaven on earth—Tristan.
I had fallen from perfect goodness and Tristan had risen from the blackest evil. Our souls had met somewhere in the in-between, completing the broken half of the other. The other angels had cast me out until I fulfilled my purpose. I felt terribly alone, the closest I could come to home was to spread my wings every now and then and dance the way we danced in heaven. Tristan, who was hiding in the grass on one of those days, watched me and was made to feel again. He credited me with preserving his newfound goodness, but he wasn’t aware that he’d saved my own as well. He saved me from my loneliness, and from the grating bitterness that being cast out created in me. He reminded me why it was that we angels loved mankind so much—he was flawed but wanted to be good, fought to be so. Our love would fight too, refusing to die, even when I did, even when I couldn’t remember.
But we always knew that this night would come. Our forever was destined to be only temporary. Tomorrow, our fairy tale would really be over. Daemon was coming to us; there would be no more running from my purpose. Tomorrow meant warning the haven of an unavoidable war with the vampires and all of the worry and fear that came along with it. How could that many get here unnoticed? How could we face them once they did? Would the haven unite despite me? Was I truly up to this?
I couldn’t worry about those questions tonight. I wouldn’t, but there was still the question of Darren. Well, it wasn’t a question really. He was my choice. He was, to this point, the love of my life—this lifetime anyway. I still felt those feelings for him, even now. He was another reason I couldn’t fail this time, because he had to live. Tristan was fated to be my past, after my encounter with Daemon, one way or the other. However, if I could succeed in defeating him somehow, then Darren would get to be my future.
Tonight wasn’t about the future. It was about honoring the past—the boy that I’ve loved with the whole of my being. My soul mate, my companion. The clock in our fairy tale was about to strike midnight, leaving us time enough for one last adventure—one final night of being without a care, to pretend as though the whole world consisted of only the two of us.
“Thank you,” he whispered. He took me into his arms and we disappeared into the night.
***
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