He smiles at me as I have told him what he wants to hear. “I’m sorry about just leaving. I should have talked to you about it. About Jess before…I had no idea she was there. We aren’t…she wants to be but I love you…” He trails off looking despondent.
“You’re not together?” I ask, going for innocence but not quite pulling it off.
“No,” he says hesitantly. “I can’t tell you what’s going on yet. I need some time to figure it out.”
“She is in love with you,” I state.
“I know, but I am not in love with her, it’s complicated.”
“Uncomplicate it,” I demand gently.
“It’s not for me say, yet. Just give me time to figure it out,” he says again.
“Are you planning on turning her?” I ask the loaded question and hold my breath waiting for his answer, which comes as a very shocked, “Christ, no! Lizzie, you know that’s not my thing.”
I’m somewhat relieved but press on, “But, Cole tells me that she wants you to.”
“She has asked. She has her reasons, but I told her no.”
“Why?”
He gives me a scathing look. “Apart from the fact that I’m in love with you, I don’t want to sire without love,” he says after a long pause. Gee, where have I heard that before? “I’ve gone half a millennium and never found anyone I can love enough to want to be with them forever, except you. No one even comes close to what I feel for you.”
“I think that’s half your problem,” CK says from the bedroom door. He is dressed just in sweats and I’m pretty sure I start to drool, just a little.
“This conversation is private,” Devon growls.
CK saunters over to us and sits on the coffee table in front of me. “Well, you are in my hotel room, our hotel room,” he amends at my look. “Even if I wasn’t a Vampire, I would still be able to hear you.”
Well, he has us there.
“So, what is your not-so-humble opinion?” I ask him as he takes my hands.
“Devon,” he says, “you say you are in love with her.”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure about that? Take a long hard look at her.”
He does. “What am I looking at?”
“You are looking at Liv. Not Elizabeth. Liv is not the girl you fell in love with. In fact, if I recall, the whole reason you left her in the first instance was because she Shifted to her natural form and you said yourself that she wasn’t.”
Devon and I are staring at each other in confusion. What the fuck is he saying here?
“Constantine. I am still me,” I say, but even I hear the lack of conviction.
“No, my love. You are not Elizabeth. You are Liv. Whether you like it or not you are different. I’m not saying, Devon, that you don’t love her. Of course, you do, she is your sire and you have a bond. A strong one. In fact, so strong that I have never seen the likes of it in all my years. You live together, work together. Like each other.” He pauses and we are staring at each other now dumbfounded.
“I think you need to separate your feelings for Elizabeth from Liv. From Lexie, from Carrie, from Katherine and Svetlana and everybody else since 1692 when Elizabeth Shifted. Even though she can Shift to Elizabeth, she isn’t the same. She has grown, lived, loved, lost. Can you honestly look at her now and say you are in love with her? Cole’s sire? His wife?”
Fuck me. Talk about insight. Where does he pull this stuff from?
Devon looks at me. “I don’t suppose I have ever thought about it in that way, but, yes, I do love you, Lizzie. I am in love with you. I want you and desire you and we have something so special; I don’t want to lose that. Ever.”
“Neither do I. Come home, to me.”
“It doesn’t change anything though. I won’t be last anymore.”