Хлоя Нейл: Twice Bitten

There was a knock at the door. I assumed it was Lindsey, coming to gather me up for breakfast and rehab work, so I opened it without hesitation.

It was Ethan. He was back in jeans, paired again with a T-shirt and dark boots. I guessed our Master was ready for work, as well. “How are you feeling?”

“Well healed,” I told him. “You?”

“So far so good.”

“Excellent.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

We stood there for a moment, the pink elephant dancing around us as we studiously worked to avoid her.

Ethan held out his hand. In his palm was a glossy blue box with a silver “C” engraved in the top. Brow furrowed, I took it from him.

“What’s this?”

“An apology, of sorts.”

I made a moue, but slipped the lid from the top . . . and then my breath left me.

Inside the box sat a baseball, its well-worn white leather marked by the signatures of every Cubs player from the team. It was just like the one I’d had—just like the one I’d told him about the night we made love.

I blinked down at the box, trying to take in the gravity of the gift. “What—where did you get this?”

Ethan slid his hands into his pockets. “I have my sources.”

“You shouldn’t have—” He stopped me with his hand at my jaw, thumb against my chin. “Sometimes, people must adapt. Immortality doesn’t make the things we love less important; it means we must learn to treasure them. Protect them.”

I swallowed hard and made myself lift my gaze to him, fear and joy and more fear bursting in my chest.

“It is an apology,” he said, “for not believing in you . . . or in us. Yesterday, I thought I’d lost you, and then we fought together,” he said. “I pushed you away for fear of what our relationship would do, could do, to this House. And then we protected this House together. That is the true measure of what we could do.”

He paused, then tapped a finger against the box. “This is a wish,” he said quietly, “that even after four hundred years of existence, a man can be strong enough to accept the gifts he’s given.”

“Ethan—,” I began, but he shook his head.

“I’m prepared to wait for a positive response.”

“That’s going to take a while.”

Ethan lifted a single eyebrow, a grin lifting one corner of his mouth. “Sentinel, I am immortal.”

He turned on his heel and began down the hall, then called back, “And we’ll need to chat about your running off campus and into the arms of shifters without so much as a telephone call.”

Sometimes, he was so predictable.