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My mom and dad entered the room, each of them pale, drawn and terrified.
I ran into my father’s arms. He kissed my head.
No one said anything.
We couldn’t.
We were all too busy hoping.
* * *
My first full and clean inhale was marred by cleaning products.
Probably because I was surrounded by them. Because I was currently hiding in some sort of cleaning closet.
Yes, I was hiding in a hospital closet, breathing because I could finally do that now.
Because hope somehow won.
Lucy woke up.
She survived.
And she had it in her to joke about how bad her hair looked and demanded someone go and get her “Egyptian Cotton sheets and a pair of Versace pajamas.”
But there was no missing the gray pallor to her face. The shadow of death still lurking in the room, hiding underneath that sterile lemony scent.
But I’d smiled at her bedside. Overjoyed, just like my parents had been, through their tears. Keltan hadn’t left her side.
He’d changed out of his bloodstained clothes.
In fact, he’d changed the next time I saw him after I’d thrown up at the sight of him.
I wondered if Heath had anything to do with it.
Of course Heath had something to do with it.
He hadn’t left. He’d left me to sit with my family, with a panicked Rosie who arrived a few hours before Lucy woke up.
She’d immediately yanked me into her arms and I relaxed into her small but strong embrace. I hadn’t seen her in a year. Not since she up and disappeared to who knew where doing who knew what.
Whatever it was, was bad. Because even though this place, this situation changed us all, there was something deeper behind her eyes, something darker than the Rosie I’d seen before.
“We’re going to kick her ass when she wakes up,” Rosie murmured after letting me go but still holding tight onto my hands.
That was her way of saying “she has to wake up because I couldn’t handle it if she didn’t.”
But she did.
So no one would actually have to live the reality of a world without her. But we would always live this memory.
I had slipped out of the room when I got enough reality to chase away the worst of my memories. Of my demons.
And now I was here, hiding in some supplies closet because I didn’t know where to go to breathe. To let my tears fall.
Because I couldn’t do it in the open, under harsh hospital lights, where people might see. Where I might catch a glimpse of myself.
The door opened and light flooded in. I was about to prepare some kind of excuse to whatever hospital employee opened the door, but it closed quickly again, and I was in muscled arms and pressed into a warm and muscled body.
“How did you know I’d be in here?” I whispered against Heath’s mouth.
The tightness of the space meant we were pressed up against each other out of necessity. But it was not just necessary because of the space.
He didn’t answer. A magician never gives away his tricks, after all.
Instead of answering, he kissed me.
Kissed me.
After years.
He kissed me like no time had passed, but somehow like an eternity had gone by in our separation.
I should’ve pushed him away. Should’ve grasped onto all the reasons that were so tangible before this day.
But instead, I grasped onto him. And I kissed him back with everything I had. All of my grief, sorrow, anger, frustration. All of the emotions that I never let ripple the smooth and happy façade.
My hands went underneath his tee, raking up that hard and warm skin that I hadn’t let myself remember.
He continued to kiss me, clutch my neck with one hand, the other went right to my ass, yanking my body farther against him, grinding me onto his hard length.
I moaned into his mouth.
He wasn’t kissing me to give me comfort, tenderness, after one of the hardest moments in my life. After being faced with the ugliest of all realities.
No, he was kissing me in the midst of that ugly reality. Giving me another one.
I moved my hands from underneath his tee to move downward, to work his belt with a desperation that crossed over into insanity.
He didn’t stop kissing me as I fumbled with his belt, trying to free him in the small space.
But then I no longer had purchase on his belt because I was being lifted up. My panties pushed to the side, and he surged into me.
I cried out into his mouth, wrapping my legs around him as he fucked me ruthlessly, brooms and cleaning products falling around us with the force of his thrusts.
My orgasm came quick and intense. Life-shattering. Life ending. His mouth left mine and the palm of his hand muffled my cries in a way his kiss couldn’t. He didn’t stop as I tumbled over the edge, as my orgasm threatened to destroy me. No, he continued with his movements, harsh and beautiful and almost unbearable.
