Page 67 of Up In Flames

She folds her hands in front of her, clasping them together. “Then go ahead and be evil. If free will doesn’t matter, then why not eat people when the urge strikes you?” She holds out her arm. “Here. Take a bite. Go ahead. It doesn’t matter, right? You’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t, so go ahead. I bet I taste good.”

“Nina.” My stomach turns.

She drops her arm. “If there’s no free will, then you can steal, kill, maim whenever you feel like it… and it doesn’t matter, because you’re only following some demented programming. Plus, you’ll be going to Hell anyway, unless there is no afterlife, no God, no punishment, no reward. Either way, it doesn’t matter. If there’s no free will, nothing matters.”

“Nina.” But my heart is beating so fast, I’m waiting for it to jump right out of my chest like I’m some cartoon character.

“If there’s no free will, there can’t be evil or good. No one blames the puppet for what the puppet master makes it do, right?”

I let her point settle. I’m almost upset when it does because it means I’ve been an idiot in leaving her.

She steps up to me. “Go ahead, Sammy. Hit me. Hit me hard. Stop me talking to you. Shut me up.”

I shudder and close my eyes, the very notion disgusting me to the bottom of who I am. “Please, don’t. Don’t ever say such things.”

“You’re revolted because you’re a good man, Sampson. And you’re a good man, not just because you’re a programmed machine, but because you choose to be a good man, over and over again, with each choice you make, every single day of your life. And being a Nephilim doesn’t change what you’ve decided to be today, or who you’ll decide to be tomorrow.”

I open my eyes. “Maybe there’s some middle ground I’m not seeing. Maybe I only have a moral compass because it’s been driven into me by my parents, but maybe I’m destined to revert to my biology.”

“Sammy. I love you, but you’re being dense. There’s no middle ground. Either your actions and your choices define you, or they don’t.” She takes another step forward. She’s so close, I can live in her perfume. “I don’t know if I’m explaining it right, but what I’m saying is the only thing that makes sense, and you know it, you idiot giant.”

“Great way to make me stay with you. Call me names.” But I can barely press out the words, because the truth is hammering into me. I feel it in my gut, just like I felt the truth of my origins that day in my apartment with Xy. And if she’s right, then I have a choice to make, and it’s a complicated one.

Maybe I’m not cursed because of what I was born, despite what the Nephilim say, or if I am cursed, maybe through good deeds I can lift myself from my origins? Because… because I’ve always tried to be good. I think that being good matters. I think my choices matter.

I think loving Nina matters.

“I don’t know what the Old Testament has to say about cursing generations, but if that’s the rule, then there must be exceptions, because every rule ever devised has exceptions.” She reaches up to lay her hand upon my stomach. Her touch ricochets through me and settles in my chest like warm light. “It doesn’t matter what you’re born, Sammy. It’s what you become. And by any measure I can find, what you’ve become is admirable. You’ve done nothing, ever, worth cursing… other than failing to uphold your promises to me a week ago, which should earn you some time in the deepest pit I can dig for you. But I can forgive you if you start acting smart again.”

She means that I left her, and lied about not loving her. Plus, I’m suddenly remembering that I never did get to show her the joys of a little spanking. Nor did I fuck her after she made me orgasm on her tongue.

That’s got to be the worst sin of all of them.

She taps her foot and folds her arms over her chest. “I’ll wait for you to have your lightbulb moment. What the hell, I’ve got a lifetime, the same one I was offering you, you unreasonable, big oaf.”

Ooh, she’s mad. At me.

And it’s… amazing. A huge shaft of light pierces through my veins. She’s serious. She doesn’t believe I’m cursed. She’s focusing on what I’ve tried to become—a man my parents could be proud of. A man who wants to balance the scales for all the wonderful things he’s been given. She’s not seeing the result of some horrific, supernatural union, like I’ve been seeing.

I want her version to be true so badly, I can taste the bitter dregs and sweetness on my tongue. I want to believe her. I want her to be able to accept the monster parts of me, so that then, maybe, I can accept those parts, too.

I’ve got a choice: believe her version and live. Believe my version, and die, because living a life of isolation and fear is going to kill me, not to mention that I can’t figure out how I’ll stay away from her no matter what I try, or how far I flee. I’m not that strong.

“I don’t know,” I say, fighting a smile that’s tearing at my lips, and probably losing. “Though it’s true I left you hanging, didn’t I? If memory serves, we were also talking about spanking.”

She blushes like a budding rose whose pink center is revealed in sudden splendor. “Promises, promises.”

“I’ll promise if you take me up on them.”

“Isn’t that what I’ve been saying, you moronic giant?” Her arms drop, and she huffs out a deep breath. “So, will you fucking go down to Swanson’s Jewelers and buy me an engagement ring already?”

“You’re serious? You still want to marry me?”

She pokes me in the abdomen with her finger. “You. Asked. Me. Are you a giant of his word, or a sniveling wimp?”

I like this side of her. She’s feisty, a little mean, and exactly what I need right now. She’s strong when I’m weak. I never considered that could happen, but she’s carrying me. Supporting me. And I think… I think she doesn’t mind being that support. Even before my parents died, I was the pillar upon which everyone leaned. It’s my size. I learned early that I was expected to hold up others.

But now, she’s holding me up.