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Every nerve, every cell, screamed in protest as I was moved. My body twitched of its own will. I couldn’t stop it. I moved like a boiling pot, convulsing and crackling into unnatural shapes. I heard a horrible sound.
Then I realized that horrible sound had come out of me.
Then, images flashed before me. A pink, glittery jump rope. A scraped knee. My first ride on a roller coaster. A fight with Jack. My first kiss. A memorable Christmas. They moved at lightning speed, like some strange kind of flip book. Abruptly, they stopped, and I was looking at Cole.
But I couldn’t see his face. I could only see…
I was floating above him. Outside my body and no longer in pain.
He was holding me in his arms. Numbly, I worried about the blood coming out of my shoulder and onto his pale blue shirt. I’d bought him that shirt. I loved that color on him.
But it wasn’t much blood. Not as much as there should have been.
Because my heart was no longer pumping it.
“Baby, no,” Cole wept over my body. “Baby, please.”
I looked so small in his arms. I looked so frail.
Perhaps I had never been built to live long. Perhaps this was always meant to be my fate. To love fiercely and recklessly and burn out like a too-hot star.
“You can’t leave me,” Cole cried. “Baby, I need you. Baby, please.”
I felt the pull of something behind me. A warmth that promised the end of sadness, the comfort of darkness, a final rest.
But one thing kept me tethered to Cole. It was something in his pocket.
As if he’d been prompted as well, he pulled that item out of his pocket and held it over my body. I could hear his short, shuddering sobs as he stared down at it. Then he sniffed once, pressing his forehead to mine.
I heard him as if I was right next to him as he started whispering to me. “Forgive me, Marley,” he said quietly. “I’m too selfish to let you go. It’s not my decision to make, but I have to make it, or I’ll live the rest of my life wondering if I could have saved you.”
There was a brief pause, and then…a sharp prick in my arm.
I careened back down into my body with a force like being in a car wreck. Every part of my body hurt. Most of all, my lungs as I gasped cold air into them after they’d been dormant.
My blurry eyes focused on Cole as he looked down at me with wild, puffy eyes.
“Marley?”
“Hey, good looking,” I croaked.
He crushed me into him, kissing me all over again. He was crying…and then I was crying, too. He pressed his forehead against mine.
But my wound wasn’t healing.
And I could no longer hear his heart—my heart—beating in his chest.
For the first time in weeks the world around me was eerily quiet. The smells not quite as vivid as before.
I swallowed tightly as a few more tears slid down my face. “You used the serum, ” I said.
He brushed a thumb against my cheek. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry for taking your choice away. But I couldn’t live without you.”
“I thought you…gave it to the doctor…”
“I did,” he said quietly. “But…but then I asked for it back. I got…I got too afraid. Marley, I’m sorry, I–”
I brought my hand up to cup the side of his face, feeling sleep closing in on me…or it was unconsciousness from blood loss. “I forgive you,” I slurred. “I just hope that I can…be enough…like this.”
