“You’re still scared, aren’t you?” he asks, tucking some of my hair behind an ear.
“I’m… Yes. I’m not scared of you,” I add in a rush, “but I’m terrified of the future. The time I’ve spent here has been so chaotic and wild, and I’ve made some great friends between you, Orchid, Wren, Dahlia… Sage…”
“Sage.” Damon just smiles that much wider.
I swallow hard. I knew I shouldn’t have mentioned him, but I couldn’t help myself. All first year long, I thought of Sage as the fairy of my dreams. Am I still clinging to the hope that Sage and I can get back together again just because he had been my first? If I had been with Damon first, I don’t know if Sage would’ve been an issue at all. Damon knew from the first who I was. Sage was the one to confuse me with my twin.
"If you hadn't known from the start that I had a twin, do you think you would've realized there were two of us?" I ask suddenly.
“Would I have made the same mistake that—”
“Damon,” I say warningly.
“I would’ve known,” he whispers, touching my cheek. “Even if you hadn’t made a special point in telling me about Bay and trying to pawn me off on her.”
I blush. “Yeah, we’ve come a long way from that, haven’t we?”
"Yes, we have, and yet not nearly far enough. It intrigues me that your sister wants us together when you originally picked me out for her. Why is that?"
“My sister is a little dark, and you…”
“So a half-demon has to be with someone dark. Stereotypical.”
He’s getting a little upset, but I am too.
“My sister is a good fairy,” I protest.
“You always make excuses for her. No matter what she does, she’s never completely in the wrong.”
I have nothing to say to argue that.
And he knows it.
“You can’t refute that because if you try, you wouldn’t be able to talk. You can’t lie.”
“And you can,” I snap. “You can—”
He presses a finger to my lips. “I don’t want to fight, but I want you to know this. I will never lie to you.”
“No?” I eye him skeptically. “If I get a terrible haircut or wear unflattering clothes, you won’t tell a little white lie to make me feel better about myself?”
He touches the crescent moon pendant Bay gave me. “I would talk about your eyes, how I adore their purple color. I would talk about how soft your hair is and how I want to feel it on my naked body. I would—”
“Is it just lust you feel for me?” I whisper, staring at his chest.
“Is it just lust you feel for me?” he whispers back. “I know you have feelings for me, but are you afraid to act on them because of what I am? Or because you’re afraid you’re more like your sister and darker than everyone suspects?”
“Wanting to have sex doesn’t make someone dark,” I say, but I have my eyes closed, and I’m unnaturally still. Talking to him about this is not easy. Not at all.
“No, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have some darkness inside of you.”
I blow out a breath and force myself to open my eyes. “Is that why you’re attracted to me? You want to see if you can draw out any darkness from the lightest fairy here?”
“That’s just it, Rosemary,” he says, for once not using the nickname he has for me. “The people who claim you’re the lightest fairy here are either teasing you or else they’re just flat-out wrong and don’t know you as well as I do. You’re just like me, a mixture of light and dark, and that’s why I think we would make an amazing couple, but if you can’t see that, if you can’t pick me… I’m not going to wait forever.”
He could have flown away at that moment, and it would've broken my heart and felt far too permanent, but instead, he traces his thumb along my lips. Only after does he fly off.
He flies off and takes a piece of me with him.
Chapter 7
Two seconds later, Damon flies back to me.
"What now?" I ask, trying to recover my senses that are still reeling from his words and from the kiss. "You just can't get enough of me, can you?"
“I just realized I never said hello to you either.”
I burst out laughing. “That’s your lame excuse?”
“How about that’s just my excuse? No reason to call it lame.” He winks.
I shake my head. “You need to come up with better excuses.”
“Oh, if I were to come up with an excuse for sneaking into your room at night, you better believe it will be the best excuse there is.”
“You do realize I have a roommate, don’t you?”
"Oh, maybe I can have your roommate be in cahoots with me so the room will be empty outside of us. Or I could convince you to fly with me."
“To where exactly?”
“Anywhere your heart desires.”
“Hmm. And if it were to be up to your heart? Your room, right? Your bed?”
“Maybe the first time but then we could go to Philadelphia. Or Boston. Or London, Paris, Hong Kong. Anywhere you would want to go.”
“Human cities,” I say, a bit breathlessly.
“You left campus last year to investigate human cities, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“How was it?”
“Amazing. But also scary. I was interviewing people about the murders.”
“You amaze me. You know that?”
“No.”
He laughs and shakes his head. “I’m failing in so many ways, aren’t I?”
“You’re doing fine. It’s just me. I’m the one who gets so easily flustered and overwhelmed, and—”
“And that just adds to your charm.”
“You aren’t hurt, are you?” I ask desperately.
“That you haven’t just picked me already?” He tilts his head to the side. “You’re worth it, but like I said…”
“I know.” Unbidden, my hand comes up and touches my lips where he traced them.
Damon winks.
"Daredevil, hello there." Sage flies on over at an angle that nearly cuts off Damon. Not an accident,
