“It is not like that,” she took a step forward, her voice low and soft, and struggling with a defensive anger that Bo hoped would at least mask the hurt she’d felt over losing Lauren. It was easier to blame her than to accept the truth – easier to believe Lauren didn’t love her than to accept that it was herself who had broken Lauren’s heart. “I chose you,” Bo accused, “and you broke my heart.”

Lauren didn’t respond right away, only looked at her with beautiful, piercing tawny eyes, and Bo could feel her own eyes burn with tears she didn’t want to shed. Bo’s heart beat heavily in her chest, a raw, bleeding, exposed mess now, and Bo couldn’t decide if the expression she saw dawning across Lauren’s face was realization, or hurt, or something else entirely. She felt so small, so insignificant standing in the face of her own inadequacies as a friend, as a lover, as a Succubus.

Then Lauren drew back for an instant, drew in a breath, and stepped closer, and Bo could smell her, a warm, sweet-smelling mixture of soap, and old books and dust and the subtle, elusive breath of honeysuckle that was so uniquely Lauren. And when she swallowed Bo could see the sudden, hard contraction of the muscles of Lauren’s throat, the trembling purse of her lips, the flutter of her eyelashes as Lauren blinked heavily as though coming out of a stupor. And she thought, for a moment, that Lauren might reach across the yawning chasm between them and kiss her.

“Yeah?” Lauren breathed, her voice a soft, warm gust of air against Bo’s face that left her skin tingling and her heart racing, “you broke mine too.” Lauren’s mouth was so close Bo could feel her words as they formed on Lauren’s lips. Bo’s eyes slid shut against the ache of a heart shorn in two, against the exhaustion of fighting with the woman she loved so much she didn’t know what to do with herself. Rainer had been the consolation, the quiet hopeless succor. He didn’t challenge her, didn’t disorient her, didn’t terrify her or elate her. He was safe. But Lauren – Lauren was the drop at the edge of the world, the weightlessness of zero gravity.