Midnight Lily(76)

Lily



"Wake up, my love," I whispered, kissing one of the purplish, circular scars on Ryan's back. He rolled over, smiling a sleepy smile. I put my hand on his shoulder and propped my chin on it, gazing into his blue eyes. As blue as the limitless sky. I took in the lines of his handsome face, my heart aching with tenderness. He was mine. Mine to fall in love with a hundred times over.

"We should go," I said, stifling a yawn. "Winter will be here soon. There's snow on the ground this morning. Just a light dusting, but whoever owns this lodge will be vacationing here. We've used it long enough."

"Hmm, okay," Ryan hummed. "But not before," he flipped me over and rose above me as I let out a surprised burst of laughter, "I ravish you a time or twelve in this huge bed."

I smiled softly at him, trailing a finger over his cheekbone, down his jaw, my thumb rubbing his full bottom lip. He kissed it and then nipped it lightly, his eyes darkening with promise.

"There's time for that." I smiled. "Take me home."

We made the five-mile walk through the cold, fresh air of the woods, hand in hand, talking about everything and nothing. A brisk wind rustled the mostly sparse trees and the very last of the late autumn leaves fluttered down around us.

Later, as the sun set over the forest beyond, the sky unabashedly gorgeous, flaunting herself in shades of mauve and lavender, I stood in front of the window on the very top floor of Whittington. There was a fire blazing in the fireplace, warming the room and making it dance with shadows and light. Miles Davis played softly on an old Victrola I'd found in the basement. "I wonder who we'll be next time," I mused. Ryan came to stand right behind me, wrapping his arms around my waist and resting his chin on my shoulder.

"I don't know," he finally said. "Maybe a doctor from Ohio." I considered that. Always someone who could go back and help him then. Oh, Ryan, my sweet, tormented love. No matter how many lives we led, some things remained constant. Always so much truth amidst the make-believe, but always having to come back to our true selves, our true stories, before we could walk out of the darkness. Always, always . . .

I smiled, turning in his arms. "Perhaps I'll be a nurse." I tilted my head up, thinking. "A blind nurse! You'll have to lead me around, of course."

"How can you be a blind nurse?" He smiled against my skin as he nuzzled my ear.

I shrugged. "As easily as I can be a ghost. We'll figure it out as we go along. As usual."

Ryan chuckled. "If only it worked that way. If only we could choose."

"If we could choose, I'd stop making your girlfriends so pretty."

He grinned, kissing my neck quickly. "They all end up looking like you anyway. I can't help it."

I smiled, but my heart squeezed slightly with sudden sadness. I thought of Nyala and how, though she wasn't real, I'd grieve for the loss of her all the same. And I knew Ryan would do the same for his version of Holden Scott, the football player. The price we paid for being sensitive souls. Perhaps made too sensitive for this world, our emotional volume set too high, drowning out the real world far too often. But in recent years, less often than before.

Perhaps we'd just be ourselves for a while.

"Do you get tired of it, Ryan? Saving me?" I glanced up at him and then away, but he put a finger under my chin and tilted my face, forcing me to look into his eyes.

He shook his head. "No. I made you a promise, and I meant it." He smiled a heartbreakingly sweet smile. "Most people only get to fall in love with their beloved once. I get to fall in love with you over and over in a hundred different lives. How lucky am I?" he finished on a hoarse whisper.

I leaned my forehead against his, holding back my tears.

"Do you get tired of saving me?" he asked.

"No," I said, shaking my head. "No. I'll venture into any darkness if I know you're there." Something about it even felt . . . healing. And I wondered about grief and madness again, how just as grief was both a malady and its own medicine, perhaps, too, madness was the same. Maybe if you walked toward it, rather than away, maybe if you dove right in and let it take you where it wanted, someday you'd walk out whole and healed. Or maybe that was only my fanciful mind speaking.

"I'll always come for you, Lily. Every time. I would travel through hell itself for you. Do you trust me?"

"With my soul," I whispered, smoothing a dark golden lock of hair off his forehead, my gaze washing over his face, his beautiful, beloved features. I kissed him softly, thinking back to the digital date display on the cable guide on the TV at the vacation lodge. "We weren't away for long—less than three months," I said.

"Is that good?"

I shrugged. "Hmm. I don't know. It doesn't have to be good or bad, I guess. It's just the way it is, for now anyway. And either way, I'll love you forever, no matter what. I'll love every version of you. Your soul doesn't ever change. I see it each and every time. I see it when I close my eyes. It calls to me in the darkness. I'll see it even when I'm blind." I smiled. "It's that bright."

"I see yours, too, my beautiful Lily."

"I know," I said, kissing him again. "I knew it when you picked me up out of the snow and carried me to that small cave carved into the rock and kept me warm. As if it had been made only for us by someone long ago who knew we'd need it someday. That we'd be out here all alone, reaching for each other in the dark."