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Live well
“Some nights, you love to see me suffer, so that I will yield. Others, you seem intent to spare me from it. I do wish you’d make up your mind.” A shadow sweeps across his face. “Trust me, my dear, you don’t.” A small shiver runs through her as he lifts the wineglass to his lips. “Do not mistake this—any of it—for kindness, Adeline.” His eyes go bright with mischief. “I simply want to be the one who breaks you.”
“Take your echoes and pretend they are a voice.”
She never gets closure, never gets to say good-bye—no periods, or exclamations, just a lifetime of ellipses. Everyone else starts over, they get a blank page, but hers are full of text. People talk about carrying torches for old flames, and it’s not a full fire, but Addie’
hands are full of candles. How is she supposed to set them down, or put them out? She has long run out of air. But it is not love. It is not love, and that is what he’s asking.
Luc’s smile darkens. “Because time is cruel to all, and crueler still to artists. Because vision weakens, and voices wither, and talent fades.” He leans close, twists a lock of her hair around one finger. “Because happiness is brief, and history is lasting, and in the end,” he says, “everyone wants to be remembered.”
“You said it was nothing.” “I said it was not enough. But I do not ruin beauty without reason. It was mine, for a time, but it was always yours.”
“Who knew gods were so nostalgic?”
Fourteen years. And she is lonely, and a little drunk, and she wonders if tonight will be the night she breaks. It would be a fall, but it is not so great a height.
It cannot last. Nothing ever does.
She does not know if it was love, or simply a reprieve. If contentment can compete with passion, if warmth will ever be as strong as heat.
