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“While I get what you’re saying,” I said. “The place is goddamn burning down. I think now is the time to leave. Is this a test or something, Jamie? Because, if it is, it’s totally working.”
I touched his arm, but he seemed unphased, focusing everything he had out his newly formed view. He crossed his arms over his chest, the flickering of flames reflecting in his eyes. And for the first time since Jamie had come to me, I realized he was far from being okay. I realized that this was a guy who still had his own demons—the demons he’d mentioned all of us having to battle even after our physical bodies perished. And Jamie had internal tormentors following him around, haunting him.
Except in his case, he no longer had the hope of escape.
Suicide was not an option.
“You’re still alive,” I said above the noise, trying to reassure him. “We don’t die. The computer doesn’t shut-off. We keep moving forward. You can’t give up.”
“I’m just like you,” Jamie whispered.
“You’re still alive,” I repeated.
“Yeah.” He let out a laugh. “You’re right. I am.”
I leaned up against his back and rested my head against his shoulder blades. My hands snaked up around his body and into his crossed arms. The fire crackled around us, the heat rising around us in a circle.
“I’m in my own version of hell,” Jamie admitted. “And until I save you… I’m trapped here. Consumed by my own emotions.”
His words dropped a bomb on me. Suddenly, I understood. Saving me meant saving Jamie.
“That isn’t why I’m doing this, Jemma,” Jamie said sternly. The muscles in his back clenched together. “I’m trying to save you so that you can move past the pain… so that one of us can be happy… so that you can grow old and live a good life and die in the arms of someone you love. I only wish that person could’ve been me. It could’ve been…”
“You want to save me, Jamie? Then let me save you, too.”
I migrated around to the front of his body and took his face in my hands. I pressed my lips to his, and he relaxed into my gesture, returning the kiss. Once more, our lips consumed one another.
Except this time, as we came together, we extinguished the fire.
I shut my eyes. Hoping this nightmare would end.
Chapter Forty-Three
Return
When I opened my eyes, Jamie and I were back in my kitchen, laying against the floor. The world returned to normal, as if the Earth had tilted on its axis from the previous environment, positioning us back to where we had been before we left.
The cloudy funk inside my mind—which I only now realized had been so cloudy—had washed away. Things had never been clearer.
I needed to save Jamie from whatever the hell it was we’d just come from.
Calm energy surrounded us, contrasting the chaos from the spiritual world. However, the internal heaviness also returned, making me very aware that I was back in my physical body. A sharp pain ran along my forehead from a pounding migraine.
I huddled against the bare floor, my arms wrapped around Jamie. The illuminated tablecloth and candelabra were gone. He squeezed his eyes shut, the glow around him flickering. The tips of his fingers dug into my back. His trembling body bunched together in a fetal position within my embrace. Sobs escaped from his quivering lips.
“I don’t want to be dead,” he said in between gasps, voice dripping with anguish. “I made a mistake… and I can’t undo it. And watching you, knowing only now what we could’ve had, is my own personal hell.”
His words brought a weight to my entire body. There was such tragedy in the idea of two people figuring out they were so similar only after one of them had died. However, along with the pain, I now had this fresh perspective. Something about knowing there was more to life than the shitty hell-hole we experienced on Earth filled me with a slightly greater amount of positivity. Plus, after what we’d experienced these last few weeks, I also felt a more protective bond over him than I’d ever experienced toward any other human being.
I needed to help him.
“Don’t you see though,” I said. “You’re living proof that there’s something more than this physical place.” I brushed my index finger along his cheekbone, collecting a few tears which were then replaced instantly with a fresh wave. “Aside from the moment back there at your house… you’ve seemed more alive than I ever saw you in the past.”
Jamie didn’t say anything. He simply continued to shake beneath my arms, and I held him more tightly, his vibration seeping into the deepest part of my core. A sad sigh escaped my lips. I didn’t know what I could do, but I somehow knew I was the only one who could do anything. No one else held such deep ties to his past like I did. No one else had seen him cry the way I had. No one else had love for him the way I did.
“Let me help you,” I said my words from earlier once more. “Open up to me for the first time ever. Show me the things you never could before.”
“I don’t want to be dead,” Jamie repeated, quite obviously still in a state of shock. “I want to go back in time to eight months ago. And I want to slap myself and say, ‘Asshole, nothing is worth your life.’”
