All This Time(49)

I pull away, staring at the curve the car disappeared around, my vision blurring as I see windshield wipers trying desperately to push away the rain, Kim in the passenger seat. “I… I drove past here. On a rainy night like this.”

There’s another boom of thunder, and I flinch at the noise, lightning splitting the sky in two. “Just like this.”

Wait.

I pull out my phone, and the screen lights up, the date appearing in white letters. June 7. “A year ago today,” I whisper.

A year. It’s been a whole year since that night.

“Let’s go home,” I say, my eyes focusing on Marley, Georgia clutched to her chest, raindrops clinging to her cheeks.

The second our eyes meet, I feel calmer. Safe.

Our fingers twine together and we make a run for it, ducking between awnings and overhangs until we get to the path leading to my house. When we arrive, we head straight for the basement, and I move to start a fire in the fireplace, the flame catching almost instantly, white and yellow and orange eating away at the wood, warming us.

I lean forward to stoke the fire as it grows across the log, swallowing it whole. There’s a clap of thunder outside, and at the same time a quick, sharp pain streaks across my forehead. The fire poker clatters noisily from my hand.

Ow. Holy shit.

I pick up the fire poker and put it back on its stand as I keep my eyes focused on the fire. That was—

An ember pops, a flash of red. For a split second I see the flare of red emergency lights on wet asphalt, a dizzying pain.

No. I’m not going through this again. I stand up, shaking it off as the room comes back into view.

I run my fingers through my hair and let out a long sigh. All these months later and I still don’t like storms. I don’t know why this one is triggering my head pain like this. It must just be the anniversary.

“You feel it too, don’t you?”

I turn to look at Marley on the couch, her long hair still damp from our run through the rain. Her face is aglow in the light of the fire, but her eyes are focused outside, staring at the storm through the French doors. Georgia is wrapped in a towel in her arms.

I sit down beside her, studying her face. There’s a distant, haunted look in her eyes. One that hasn’t been there for months.

One I thought we’d gotten rid of.

“Feel what?” I ask.

“Like we were never meant to be this happy. Like one day all this will be gone? Like…” Her voice trails off as she looks down at Georgia and then at the fireplace, her eyes taking in every corner of the room before landing on me. “Something this good can’t last.”

I cup her face in my hands and she tries to smile, but the sadness lingers around her eyes, the corners of her lips. So I kiss her everywhere I see it. One eyelid and then the other, her lips, then, softly, her forehead. She looks up at me, and I know this is the moment. More than ever before, I feel the words I’ve wanted to say for months threaten to bubble out, my heart pounding at the idea of telling her.

No more I love it. I love her. Marley. More than anything.

I repeat it over and over again in my head, my breath catching in my chest as I prepare to say the words I never thought I’d say to anyone ever again. The words I never knew could mean so much. The ones I’ve felt since that night under the full moon.

But the nerves are gone the second I open my mouth, and the words flow out more naturally than anything I’ve ever said. “I love you, Marley.”

She starts, pulling back to look at me.

“I never knew love could feel like this. That it could get so deep inside me that I have two hearts beating in my chest.…” I pull her hand up to rest above my heart. “Yours and mine. As long as we love each other, Marley, this will last. Nothing is going to stop or change that. I will love you forever. I promise.”

Before I continue, I kiss her softly, so gently it feels like a whisper.

“So I guess it really depends… on whether or not you love me, too.”

Her eyes brim with tears, and she reaches up to push the unruly strand of hair out of my face, a small smile forming on her lips. “I do,” she says, kissing me between the words. “I do, I do, I do.”

She pours herself into my arms, her yellow dress soft beneath my fingertips as I pull her closer, tugging her on top of me. I kiss her, the electricity between us crackling louder and more powerfully than the bolts of lightning on the other side of the glass.

Everything we’ve been through passes in front of my eyes as I hold her. So much has changed since that very first day at the cemetery, since the accident a year ago, this person entirely changing what I thought was even possible for my life.

We sit by the fire, curled up with Georgia under a blanket, ignoring the thunder and rain outside, focusing only on each other until the warm, crackling flames pull us closer and closer to sleep. As my eyelids grow heavy, I look at Marley, tucked safely in my arms, her cheeks rosy from the fire. “I love you,” she says softly. Hearing those words for the first time from her lips puts the biggest smile on my face.

“I love you too,” I whisper again before sleep pulls me under. I love her too. I always will.



* * *




I don’t know how long we’re asleep, but a loud crash of thunder wakes me with a start, my arms empty, the basement dark, the fire gone cold. I sit up, rubbing my eyes, squinting as Georgia sits at the French doors, whining. She paws at the little panes of glass.