“You didn’t trust me enough to tell me. After everything we’ve been through, you couldn’t tell me.” He sat on the bed’s edge, head tilted toward his chest, dejection weighing him down. “Is this why you wanted to be turned? To escape this?”
Tears almost blinded her from seeing his face, but Alice nodded.
“Damn it, I’m so angry with you I can’t think straight. You didn’t trust to tell me anything at all. If I had known...” His voice lowered again, the words coming from him almost strangled. “The hospital staff trusted me more than you though. They say you have a tumor. Not previously detected. That’s what’s been causing the seizures.” A thunderous heartbeat passed. “One MRI. That’s all that it would have taken. Now, it’s too late.”
“Why is it too late?” She thought she knew the answer. Back when she’d been to a neurologist regularly, he’d laid odds on the causes of her seizures, which ones could be corrected and which ones couldn’t.
“Inoperable,” he replied hoarsely.
Something inside her collapsed, the truth of her situation taking away any possible future. Until now, she could hope that she wouldn’t get sicker. That maybe the seizures would just miraculously stop on their own. Perhaps unrealistic, but a hope nonetheless. Now she knew better. Now she had to face reality.
Alice took a moment to digest the news, realizing that perhaps she’d been prepared for this eventuality all this time. While it hurt and saddened her, she’d done the denial and anger thing. She’d been depressed, and no amount of praying had fixed any of her problems. There wasn’t much left to do.
She waited for the unshed tears to dry up and searched the room, letting the enormity of her diagnosis settle. At last her gaze landed on the vampire standing over her.
Sebastian didn’t belong here. The designer shirt and flawless jeans might have seemed casual, but his hundred-dollar haircut upheld the image that his clothing alone could pay the groceries for a family of four for a week. The white blanket beneath him had small holes in some places, loops of threads unraveling in others. Beyond him on the wall were dots of patch jobs, a white that didn’t match the dingy white paint. His world was so different from hers and now, as she tried to explain being mortal, it couldn’t have been more apparent.
“I’ve only just found you,” he said quietly. “I never got the chance to tell you that I...I wanted to turn you, if you would have me.”
Alice sat up straighter, grateful when her head didn’t swim. “What did you just say?”
He turned his face toward her. “I was going to ask if you would consider staying with me. As a vampire.”
Not that he loved her. Not that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. Not marriage.
No. He wanted her to stay with him. As his lover, maybe. Nurse. Historian. But not his love.
And that realization hurt like hell.
A week ago, she would have jumped at the chance—jumped!—to be healed. Now...it didn’t feel quite the same. Not to have experienced what she had over the past few days without a guarantee of more. She didn’t know anymore if she could handle going back to her old life. To a life without a man like Sebastian. Without Sebastian.
“I don’t need your pity.” It took everything within her to keep her voice even. “Once upon a time, I could have used your money. But it’s too late for that now.”
“It’s not too late. I’ve amassed millions of dollars in my lifetime, and you cannot tell me that it can’t buy your health back.”
“That’s exactly what I am telling you.”
“And it’s not my pity.” He barreled forward. “I owe you my life. Without you...I don’t know what would have happened to me if someone else had found me at the club. I don’t know if anyone else would have stayed with me as I grew into my dragon self.”
But it still wasn’t love he found with her. Damn him. Was it fair to want it from him so soon after they’d met? Probably not. She couldn’t help her feelings though.
“I’m not giving up, Alice, and don’t you fucking dare consider giving up. I won’t...not without you.”