Jeaniene Frost - This Side of the Grave

“Why didn’t you answer your mobile earlier?” Bones murmured once he lifted his head. “I tried you several times. Tried Mencheres, too. Even Tepesh. None of you answered. Scared the wits out of me, so I stowed away on a FedEx plane to make sure you were all right.”

“You came all the way from Ohio because I didn’t answer the phone ?” I was torn between laughter and disbelief. “God, Bones, that’s a little crazy.”

And it was, except the part of me that had had images of his tombstone dancing in my head because he hadn’t answered his phone earlier was nodding in complete understanding. Despite all our protestations, we were so alike when it came to fear over the other’s safety, and I doubted we’d ever change.

“Crazy,” I repeated, my voice roughening with the surge of emotion in me. “And have I told you lately that your crazy side . . . is your sexiest side?”

He chuckled before his mouth swooped back over mine in another dizzying kiss. Then he picked me up, brushing past Vlad and Mencheres without even a hello, though I doubted either of them was surprised.

We’d made it into the bedroom, already ripping at each other’s clothes, when a discreet cough made my head whip around. Bones instantly had a knife in his hand, my bra dangling from his wrist. I’d gotten my own blade out when I realized the person in the room couldn’t hurt us if he tried.

“I somehow ended up here, but I can see that this is a bad time, so I’ll just check back with you later,” the unknown ghost said before disappearing into the wall.

“Not any time soon if you value your afterlife,” Bones called out after him.

I let out a strangled sound. If this was what I had to look forward to until Marie’s blood was out of my system, I seriously needed to invest in a lot more garlic and pot.

Then Bones dropped his knife and swept me back into his arms, and I forgot to care about any potential ghostly voyeurs.

“You have to leave already?” I murmured, blinking at Bones through the bright slants of sunlight that peeked out from the gaps in the drapes. “But you barely slept.”

The grin Bones flashed me was quintessential cat-that-got-the-cream, though that expression was probably better suited to me at the moment.

“I know,” he said, the words drawn out with the warmth of remembrance.

I sat up, dragging the sheet with me. “I’m serious.”

“Kitten”—Bones paused from pulling on his shirt—“four hours of sleep while holding you is far more beneficial to me than eight hours of endless tossing and turning because you’re not there.”

I couldn’t say anything for a moment. His tone was utterly matter-of-fact, no hint of romantic exaggeration or playful bantering. After all this time, I should be used to Bones’s unabashed bluntness about his feelings, but it still struck me. He didn’t hesitate to bare the most vulnerable parts of himself without care that I wasn’t the only one who could hear him. Me, I layered up in emotional safety nets most of the time, using humor or irony to conceal how deeply certain things affected me.

Not Bones. Badass undead killer he might be, but ever since we started dating, he’d never hidden his emotions from me, or did the macho downplaying of what I meant to him in front of others. He wasn’t just stronger than me physically or in power abilities. Bones also left me in the dust when it came to inner strength, daring to show his deepest vulnerabilities without any fear, safety net, or rationalization.

And it was high time I followed suit. Sure, I’d bared my heart to Bones in the past, but not nearly enough. He knew I loved him, knew I’d fight to the death by his side if need be, but there was more to it than that. Maybe some hidden, fragmented part of me had feared that if I admitted to Bones how much he truly meant to me, then I’d be acknowledging to myself that he had the power to destroy me more thoroughly than anyone, even Apollyon or the vampire council, could. All the rest of the world could only kill or devastate my mind and body. Bones alone held the power to demolish my soul.

“You once told me you could stand many things.” My voice was raspy from all the emotions battering against those well-honed inner defenses. “So can I. I can stand whatever Apollyon dishes out, can take the bigotry from others over what I am, the freaky ghost juju from Marie, all the craziness my mother can throw at me, and even the pain of my uncle dying. But the one thing that I would never, ever recover from would be losing you. You made me promise before to go on if that happened, but Bones”—here my words broke and tears spilled down my cheeks—“I wouldn’t want to.”

He’d been near the side of the bed when I started talking, but was in my arms before the first tear fell. Very softly, his lips brushed over those wet streaks, coming back pink from the drops still shimmering on them.

“No matter what happens, you will never lose me,” he whispered. “I am forever yours, Kitten, in this life or the next.”

A poignant sort of pain flowed over me, because I knew what he was promising with that statement, and what he wasn’t. Bones couldn’t swear that we’d never be separated. Being undead didn’t give any of us a claim on immortality; it just made us harder to kill. Unless Bones and I happened to be slain at the exact same time, one day, either he or I would know the grief of being without the other. I meant it when I said I wouldn’t want to go on if Bones were dead, but hard lessons from the past showed that I’d have to. Or Bones would have to go on without me. No matter how many enemies we defeated, or what impassioned promises we made to each other, this was the harsh reality.

And maybe that reality was what my last few inner shields had been trying to protect me from. Admitting that I’d be irrevocably broken without Bones meant accepting that it would happen. One day, we’d be separated. Not by our will, or even through any potential fault of our own, but through the cold, merciless barrier of death. Unless we died fighting back to back, it would happen. I’d put off being as open as Bones was about how he resided in every crevice of my heart because nothing scared me more than acknowledging that harsh, inevitable reality. Now that I finally had, the strangest kind of relief flowed over me, covering even the pain.

Holding back had done nothing to change the truth of how I felt, or of our inevitable circumstances. I’d only been fooling myself, but even worse than that, I was also cheating the time Bones and I did have together. No one knew their own fate. We could have hundreds of years together. Thousands. Or only ten minutes before a meteor struck the house and vaporized me but missed him, for all we knew. Our time together was finite, and that was all there was to it.

But now, I also finally understood what Bones already knew. Just because death would eventually separate us, that didn’t mean it would destroy what we had. I am forever yours, in this life or the next. Some things could penetrate even the formidable barrier of death, and love was one of them. Even if death kept me from being with Bones for a while—or him from me—it couldn’t keep us apart forever. In the end, nothing could, and at long last, I understood that.

“You’ll never get rid of me, either,” I said, and my laughter came out thicker from tears. “No matter which side of the grave we’re on. I’ll haunt you, chase you all around eternity, whatever it takes, but it’s you and me until the stars burn out.”

I barely had time to see his smile before his mouth moved over mine with slow, blistering intensity. It wasn’t the skillful way he kissed me that made my chest tighten as though my heart might start up again at any moment. It was the last wall falling down between us.