High Voltage (Fever #10)(85)

Before he left, he offered to get me the Elixir of Life.

When I said no, he offered to make me like him.



I dropped the letter and sat staring blankly. He’d done what? I’d asked him to do that very thing. He’d said no, it wouldn’t work, it might kill him. Then he’d gone to Dancer and offered to do it anyway. For me. I spent several long moments trying to process that, then resumed reading.



He said it wasn’t a guaranteed success, my heart might blow anyway. I might not survive the transformation. But because you loved me, he would try. He said neither the elixir nor becoming like him was without price, both came accompanied by significant problems. He said he would tell me those problems if I chose one of the options.

I’ve never been so tempted in my life.

But there’s a pattern and purpose to all things. I see it in the sublime truth of math, I hear it in the perfection of great musical compositions. This spectacular universe knows what it’s doing.

He also told me the definition of love you gave him when you were fourteen—great one, by the way!—but said you’d missed something.

He said love is the willingness to put the happiness and evolution of the person you love before your own. Even if it means giving them up.

Time for brutal truth: I always knew you wanted us both. Stop sweating it, wild thing. I’m only one of the many twists and turns of your evolution.

I’m getting tired now. It won’t be long. I want to rest so I can make love to you again tonight when you get home. The way you look at me in bed, with all that fierce emotion blazing from your eyes, the way you touch me—you’re not big on words but I feel it in your hands—and, because of you, I’ve gotten to be the man I always wanted to be in this lifetime.

Dani, my bodacious, magnificent red thread, you rocked my fucking world, you rattled my existence, you woke me up to shades of life I’d never seen before.

I think sometimes we don’t get to see our red threads for a dozen or more lifetimes. I hope other times we get a hundred lives together, back to back. I can’t wait for the chance to love you again.

But it’s not my turn now.

That privilege belongs to someone else.

I love you like pi.

Dancer

I dropped my head in my hands and wept.





All these things made me who I am

WHEN I DECIDE TO box something, I don’t fail.

I did now.

I sat at the table, staring out at the night beyond the windows, remembering Dancer. The first time I’d met him, each and every time after. The times he’d vanish for days then I’d find him again and we’d be so bloody happy to see each other, and crack ourselves up and play with the pure, wild abandon of teens in a world that had no rules except those we made for ourselves. No one to tell us when to sleep or wake, what to eat, what not to eat, no one to tell us how to live. We’d learned from each other.



We’d set off bombs and investigated mysteries. He’d invented things for me, given me a bracelet I’d lost Silverside, and I’d shown him my zany, expeditious velocity world. We’d watched cartoons, played at being Pinky and the Brain, other times I’d been Tasmanian devil with him or the Roadrunner, whizzing us around our town, twisting and carving and embedding our initials into everything.

We’d grown up and tackled even more important mysteries, saving the world together, falling in love.

I’d gotten his not-so-subtle message: we have more than one red thread.

And those threads aren’t gender or even species specific, at least not in my case. Some of them are romantic, some of them aren’t.

Mac’s one of my threads, our lives inextricably intertwined. I think Mac and Christian also have a red thread, their interactions not always easy but definitely transformative.

Shazam is one of my threads, too. I think Kat may be as well. We have things to learn from each other; she with her enormous empathy and me with my formidable walls.

Rowena was a great big nasty thread but not a red one. I think people can invade your life and tangle themselves around you, a black rope, and if you create too much bad Karma together, maybe they become one of your red threads in a next life, and ever after, until you get whatever you’re supposed to learn from your involvement with them—these people who force their way in and wreck your world. Perhaps it’s a lesson in some kind of cosmic forgiveness.

I haven’t learned it yet. I don’t forgive her. She was one crazy bitch and I still don’t know everything she did to me.



Ryodan is one of my red threads, too. He might be a massive red rope, ten times as thick as a normal thread. I’m afraid Dancer saw that.

Love is funny. Even though you don’t have that person anymore, you still have the feeling. You didn’t lose your love. You lost the tangible, tactile, sensesational ability to experience the person or animal you lost.

Grief is all about not being able to touch anymore. Not being able to use your senses to experience them on a physical level. They’ve moved beyond an impenetrable veil, beyond your hands and mouth and eyes.

And…of course…that led me to another thought I tried to box and failed.

I was losing my ability to touch everything.

I recognize rabbit holes when I see them. That was a long, bottomless one.

I pushed myself up briskly, refusing to tumble over that edge. It was what it was. Period. Patterns, meaning, not my forte. Action, swift and sure, I get that.