Page 56 of Hunger

"I'm sorry for the people you killed," she says. "For Craig and the others. For Tammy and the professor and my mother."

I don't know what she means at first. Then I do.

"I didn't kill any of them but Craig," I say. "The others I fed on are alive. They won't remember me. They're safe."

She closes her eyes for a long moment.

When she opens them she lifts her hand and lays her palm flat against the side of my face.

"Thank you," she says.

I don't know what she's thanking me for. The not-killing, perhaps. Or perhaps the giving back of pieces of herself she'd been missing. Or perhaps something else. I don't ask.

We lie together for a long time after that. She drifts and I think she'll sleep but she doesn't. The light in the room continues to drain. The window has gone dark blue and then deeper. The streetlight outside comes on.

I should go.

The day is gone and the night belongs to me. The arrangements that have been waiting in my head for two weeks now have to be made real. The phone call. The papers. The thousand small things that move two lives across an ocean. I can't do any of them lying beside her.

I'll come back tomorrow night with everything ready.

"Farkas." Her voice is sleepy now.

"Yes."

"You aren't leaving forever."

"No."

"You'll come back."

"Tomorrow night. And then I'm taking you with me."

She's quiet for a moment. I don't know if she's heard. Then her hand finds my chest in the dim light and her palm presses flat against the scar.

"Yes," she says.

The word lands in me the way her arching into my touch did, the way her name in her own voice did, the way every small offering she's given me has.Yes.

She closes her eyes. The fatigue is catching up to her. The afternoon has been long. The evening has been longer.

I lift myself away from her gently. I rise from the bed. I pause for a moment, looking at her in the dim room. Her hair pooleddark beneath her head. The bare line of her shoulder above the blanket. The small form of her in the bed.

I dress.

I do it carefully. The trousers. The shirt. The coat. The boots. I'm slow about it. I don't want to leave.

I cross back to the bed.

I lower my face to hers.

I press my mouth to hers in the second kiss. The first kiss was hers. She gave it to me in the daylight. This one is mine. I give it to her in the dark. My lips against the warmth of hers, careful of my teeth, lingering — I don't want to lift my mouth from hers. I don't want to do anything but stay.

I lift my mouth.

"Tomorrow night."

"Tomorrow night."