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I stood there for a millennia after they’d left.
The street was quiet and empty.
The sunset well and truly smothered by dusk.
Neri didn’t move from her ball on the grass, and I didn’t have the strength to walk to her.
We stared at each other.
Eyes devouring.
Hearts pounding.
Both of us afraid.
So fucking afraid this wasn’t real.
But then...she started to crawl toward me. On hands and knees as if she didn’t have the power to walk.
It broke my terrified trance.
I forgot I needed my cane for support.
I forgot who I was and what I’d suffered.
I ran.
I ran like I’d been able to run in the past, accepting the prosthetic as a part of me as I bolted across the road, leapt the curb, then slammed to my knees before her.
I felt no physical pain.
Only emotional.
Spiritual.
A ripping and slicing, a tearing and bleeding.
The grass was real.
The twilight was real.
She
is
real.
Neri crawled into me with the softest whimper.
And the moment we touched, everything gathered, poised, and ignited.
Our skin fired.
Our blood sang.
Our bones merged into one.
My arms snapped around her.
Never again.
Never fucking again would I let her go.
With an aching sob, she burrowed herself into me, not content with how tightly I embraced her, needing more, taking everything. Curling into my lap, her arms wrapped around my shoulders as she tucked her tear-wet face against my neck.
I gasped and shuddered.
I’d never felt anything so good.
So perfect.
So right.
My embrace turned violent. My desperation vicious as I crushed her to me, savage and punishing, feral and fearful.
She hugged me back, trembling with need, punishing both of us, hurting us in so many frantic ways.
“Tell me this is real. Tell me I’m not crazy,” she moaned, pressing a kiss to my throat.
I tried to answer her.
I tried to speak around the river in my soul.
But...for the first time in my life, I lost complete control.
She did to me what that damned electric chair had never achieved.
She broke me.
Spectacularly, totally.
The walls in my mind tumbled.
The chains and locks—hiding all my compartments and neatly stacked boxes of torture, grief, and secrets—snapped and shattered.
No more lying.
No more pretending or coping or hoping to be better while unable to face the past.
I had no protection.
I couldn’t hide.
And in that moment of breaking, I gave in.
I sank into the rubble left inside me.
I accepted everything that Cem had done.
I surrendered to myself.
To life.
To her.
And...I sobbed.
I gathered Neri against me, tucking her into my arms and heart, and cried my fucking eyes out.
We rocked together.
Grieved together.
We let five years of misery wake around us and a lifetime of denial to finally wash free.
And that was how we stayed for days, weeks, years.
It felt as if the world kept spinning, but we were in our own universe. Singular and apart, found and finally free.
I didn’t know how much time passed, but eventually, our tears dried up and our arms ached with cramps. Night had fallen, cicadas chirped, and waves crashed upon the sand down the road.
Streetlights had clicked on as we slowly untangled ourselves and pulled away just enough to look into each other’s eyes.
We froze.
I couldn’t explain the peace inside me. The humbling, honouring union that...everything would be okay now.
I had no more ghosts haunting me, no more fears or failures.
I’d let them all go.
I was empty and blissful and absolutely enraptured by this moment and all the moments we would make together.
We didn’t speak as our gazes locked and our hearts did all the talking.
I cupped her cheek and ran my thumb over the streaks of salt on her skin. She leaned into my palm with a hitched breath, and it was as natural as coming back to life as I slid my fingers around her nape and tugged her forward.
Our noses touched first, nudging with the softest hello. Our breath touched next, mingling with our linked lifeforce. And when our lips touched for that first time in over five years, we didn’t rush. Didn’t deepen. We shivered and groaned, sinking into the taste of love and knowing that this was it for us.
We kissed.
Through death and time, separation and sadness.
We’d survived only to come back to the one place that made sense.
She and I.
Together.
Nothing would come between us.
Nothing else existed but this.
Always.
Just this.
Her eyelashes fluttered closed as I pressed my mouth harder against hers.
Her tongue feathered out and licked mine hesitantly.
I opened for her.
I welcomed her.
I shuddered as we licked and remembered, exploring one another and recognising what we’d lost.
We spent another decade kissing on her front lawn. Unhurried, uncaring, totally consumed by the dance and dark heat of tongues, lips, and lust.
Lust.
I’d forgotten what it felt like.
I’d shoved it out of my mind and forbidden my body to remember.
But it remembered now.
The longer we kissed, the harder I got. The more her fingers tugged on my hair, the more I clung to control so I didn’t push her onto her back and take her right there, in front of her neighbours and their nosy cats.
