When Earth is conquered by the sinister Greys and the alien who killed Evie's husband returns seeking her help, she must find a way to enact her revenge and fight the growing feelings for the creature who is an exact replica of the man she loved.
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I'd imagined this moment so many times since the Grey who killed Tom had come back into my life.
I'd thought about how it would feel to see the look on his face – the same look of fear that Tom had worn when he'd been knocked down, his heels hammering at the ground, clutching onto this nightmarish creature that was killing him. I'd thought about the delicious kick of revenge and sense of justice I would feel, knowing that I had been the one to kill it, I had been the one to bring about its end. A life for a life. Two years of living with pain that had raged through my veins every single day, pain that had shook every bone, twisted and knotted every muscle until it was all I knew.
Ivy had once told me that grief was like a coat in winter – you wear it every day without thinking, as the rain and snow falls, as the winds howl, and then, one day, you realise the sun is out and you don't need the coat as much as you did before. Day by day, it gets a little warmer, and the coat is put away, discarded, forgotten, until the next winter comes.
She was wrong.
Grief wasn't a coat. It wasn't something you could put on and take off. Grief was a constant. It's woven into your skin, your hair, your organs. It's knitted into your muscles, your bones, your blood. The day the Grey became Tom, I became Grief.
I'd never once believed that killing the Grey would destroy my grief, I had just thought that at least I would be able to say that I'd done something. That I'd righted a wrong somehow. That I'd tilted the Earth on its axis again.
I stared at him. At the blue of his eyes. The shape of his nose. The fullness of his lips. At the way his ears stuck out a little at the top. His jawline. His hair curling at his temples. At his chest where my pistol was pressed against his breastbone.
I couldn't do it.
How could I watch him on the floor, blood pumping from his chest, face full of fear? I could see it. I could picture it all so clearly in my head. So vivid. So stark and powerful and painful and I knew I couldn't do it.
I couldn't watch Tom die again. Fuck, I was the pathetic one. I'd thought about this so many times and the moment I had the chance, I couldn't bring myself to do it. I'd failed Tom. I'd failed myself.
A sob threatened to burst to the surface, just at the same time as the noise echoed through the empty restaurant.
Empty, save for me, Tom and now, another.
The clicking was low, almost like a purr in the back of the throat.
Click-click click. Then again. Click.
Tom's eyes widened, and his gaze flickered towards the direction of the sound. I was desperate to look. Desperate to drag my eyes from him and find the source of the noise, but my hand was still pushing the gun into his chest and I daren't look. He probably wanted me to look. He had probably planned this whole thing, just as he'd planned the ambush.
