Not.
“Yes, but to what degree and with what new conditions that must be met?” he countered. “I knew the second you didn’t want me on the Ducati that you’d found out. Then you slow-mo-Joe walked down the street. You never do that. Is that how we’re going to be now? Dancer’s so fragile that Dancer doesn’t get to do anything not Mega-approved, and that might not even include something so strenuous as swatting a fly?”
Sounded bloody good to me. I spooned up fruit and swallowed but it got stuck on a lump in my throat. I coughed and spat it back out into the bowl. He was beside me in an instant, ready to give me the Heimlich, as he had so many times in the past when I’d wolfed my food too fast to swallow. “I’d let you swat a fly,” I said crossly.
He smiled faintly. “Yeah, but would you let me swat a bee?”
“Probably.”
“How about set off a bomb and outrun it?”
“Abso-fucking-lutely not.”
“Then I guess we can’t be friends anymore. Because I will set off bombs and outrun them. And I will get to climb on that big beautiful bike of yours and wrap my arms around you and lean into all that gorgeous hair and smell you, and hear you laugh and see your eyes flash fire. Or I may as well just kick it right now because you, Dani Mega O’Malley, make me feel alive like nothing else does. And I don’t want to miss a moment of it.”
I forgot how to breathe. Wrap his arms around me, he’d said. He thought I had gorgeous hair and my eyes flashed fire. I deflected instantly, “Smell me? I always smell bad. Like blood and guts and sweat.”
“You smell fearless. And you smell good a lot. Like fall leaves, hot apple cider spiked with dark rum, and a fire topped with twigs of sassafras. You smell like life and the kind of days I want to enjoy while I’m here. Do you have any idea how I felt when you came back older? I was so pissed that you’d gone off and lived so much life without me getting to be there for any of it, but then I thought the angels must have heard my prayers to let me live long enough to kiss you. Not a fourteen-year-old kiss. A nineteen-year-old kiss. A really hot, sexy nineteen-year-old kiss.” He grinned. “Assuming you don’t have a problem with younger men. Do you have a problem with younger men, Mega?”
I ignored the part about kissing. That was too much for my ears to hear right now. He was trying to not only insist that I face his heart issue, but kissing, too? That was total bullshit. “You’ve got to be shitting me,” I said coolly. “You not only want us to stay friends, you want me to care about you even more? Are you batshit crazy? Or do you think I am?”
“Yes, no, and no,” he said evenly. “Or will you only care about someone you know will live forever?”
“Like that even exists,” I evaded.
“I happen to know it does. I watched two of Ryodan’s men die. They showed up fine a week later. I’m not stupid, Mega.”
I barely managed to conceal a wince. Bloody hell, if Ryodan knew Dancer knew that, I wouldn’t have to worry about his heart killing him. Ryodan would.
He reached for my hand but I snatched it away, then tried to soften the insult by using it to tighten my ponytail.
Ire flashed in his eyes but faded quickly. He gave a snort of soft, wry laughter. “Mom had the same reaction when she found out. Pretty much everyone in my life did. It was years before people stopped acting weird around me.”
I asked stiffly, “How did you find out?”
“I died. I was playing soccer with friends and suddenly I couldn’t breathe. I’d been having problems breathing for days, but hell, I was a kid and it was a hot summer. We don’t pay any attention to that kind of stuff. We don’t know diseases like hypertrophic cardiomyopathy exist. I didn’t even know diseases existed. Life had been a long endless summer for me up until then.”
“Did you really die?”
“Sure did. Flat-lined. I was gone for three and a half minutes then my heart just started up again. No clue why. I was unconscious when the ambulance took me to the hospital and they lost me on the way there. Then I was just back. Mom said it was because I had something important to do. I didn’t tell her that suddenly everything seemed important to do.”
When he reached for my hand this time, I let him take it and lead me to the couch. Suddenly all my usual reactions were suspect. I was seeing each of them as potentially the last thing I’d ever do with him.
I put my bowl of fruit on the coffee table, no longer hungry. As I sank down and tucked my legs beneath me, he reached for a pack of matches and lit two candles on the table in front of us, put the matches back down and stood looking at me for a long moment. “Do you know how beautiful you are?” he finally said.
I shrugged it off. “I figured it out Silverside.”
He burst out laughing. “Christ, I should have known that’d be your response. You clinically assessed yourself, decided you were symmetrical and your features met some obscure mathematical criteria, you had gorgeous skin and flaming hair to top it off and were therefore beautiful.”
That had pretty much been it. That, and my appearance had proved an effective distraction in battle with men.
“So,” he said, taking a seat next to me. “What did Caoimhe tell you?”
I was more acutely aware of his body next to mine than I’d ever been. His sudden…impermanence seemed to erase all filters from my vision, leaving only a young, very hot, very brilliant man that I cared deeply about. “Only the diagnosis.” I didn’t want to know and I had to know. “How bad is it?”