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“I broke. I shattered. I kneeled in the shallow sea and sobbed beneath the clouded moon. I slipped into that screaming abyss and lost every piece of me.
“I felt all the pain, all the loss. I was torn open, split wide, and ever so empty. So, so empty because I finally accepted that my heart flutters were just my relentless pumping organ trying to remember how to beat without him. It wasn’t some link between him and me. Not some peculiar, mystifying connection between soulmates. It was just me. Just me and my broken body fighting to function without his.”
“Oh, Nerida.” Margot came to my side and kneeled at my feet. She took my hand in hers, tears rolling down her cheeks. “I’m so sorry. So, so sorry for your loss.”
I blinked and noticed my own sodden cheeks. I studied this sweet, young woman who wore her tender, untouched heart on her sleeve, and the first twinges of a grateful smile tugged my lips.
I curled my fingers around hers.
I squeezed her hard. “It’s okay. Don’t cry for me. Like I told you before I recounted Ethan’s rape, see me as I am now: as an old woman who has loved. A successful visionary who turned the impossible into possible.”
“Oh, I do. I definitely do. I just...” She sniffed and shrugged. “I can’t help wishing your story had a happy ever after in romance as well as in business.”
I leaned forward. My pulse tripping quicker. “Who said it doesn’t?”
She scowled. “Well...you did.” She reared back, her gaze diving into mine. “You mean you met someone else, after all? You remarried?”
I looked down at my wedding ring that’d turned thin from years of spinning. The inscription was faded. The diamond chipped in one corner. But nestled beside it was another gold band. A second troth. A second wedding.
“I remarried, yes.”
“What?” Margot shot upward and stumbled to her chair. Betrayal covered her pretty face as if I’d personally cheated on Aslan. “But you said—”
“I said Aslan Avci was dead.”
“So how could you—?”
“I could because everything that I accepted that night on the beach was a lie.”
“I-I don’t understand.” Her nose wrinkled.
“That night, I believed my heart issues came from my own inability to move on. But three months later, I had scientific proof that soulmates do exist.”
“Wait...I don’t follow.” Dylan scowled. “What proof?”
I held his incredulous stare. “I’ve been written about in medical journals and studied by sceptical physicians. I’ve been poked and prodded and questioned by all manner of professionals, but in the end...their evidence was conclusive.” I smiled, my chest growing warm. “Thanks to my heart diaries. Thanks to my diligently nervous notetaking, time stamping, and durations of palpitating episodes, I had concrete proof of the moments I was afflicted with A-fib. All those pains, all those flutters, all of those fears vindicated because...it proved that I wasn’t suffering a unique event...I was sensing another’s.”
Dylan and Margot shared a look.
They glanced at me as if I’d lost my mind. Questions filled their faces that perhaps I’d been a few screws loose all along and this entire interview had been an utter waste of their time.
A complete fabrication.
Nothing more than ramblings from a madwoman.
But nothing could be further from the truth.
This was real.
I was real.
I hadn’t just found a way for humans to dwell under the sea like my childhood dreams, but I’d also irrefutably proven that love could transcend time, distance, and common sense. There were no instruments in our modern world to test the power of true love. No exams or machines capable of learning how strong that love could be.
The cor was still a mystery.
Our amare still nothing more than fantasy.
Until me.
