Lee watches me for a long moment before nodding. We get up off the floor, Lee’s grip sturdy as he helps me to stand. He grabs our winter coats, and the two of us step outside.
It’s cold, a breeze nipping at my cheeks as we walk across the deck, our boots leaving imprints in the thin layer of fallen snow. I pull up my hood before using my hand to dust awaysome of the flakes. When I lie down, Lee joins me, his breath whitening the air in my periphery as we look up at the sky.
So many stars. Endless. But all I see are twelve. Twelve flickering points of light making up a sword, the tip of the constellation’s blade shining the brightest.
Lee hums quietly. “Good night for stargazing, isn’t it?”
My heart pounds, and I turn my head to look at him, at the gentle smile on his face and the glimmer of moonlight in his eyes. My voice is only a whisper. “Yeah, it is.”
“They’re so bright tonight.”
The words are spoken casually, but Lee freezes the moment they leave his mouth. His head whips my way, his eyes wide and searching mine as he realizes this is the moment I told him about so long ago.
My smile wobbles. “Did you know when you look at the stars, you’re looking back in time?”
He shakes his head, a slow roll against the decking.
“By the time the light reaches us, years have passed. Decades, even. You’re seeing something from another lifetime.”
“Caspian…”
“When I look at the stars, Lee, all I see is you. My past. My present. My future. Every future on every star yet to shine. Always, it’s you.”
Lee reaches for my hand, his fingers wrapping around mine as the snow starts to fall once more. There are flashes in my mind. Cameras shuttering and a booming laugh, a finger tapping the freckles on my nose, and my friend smiling at me as if I’m his whole entire world. A room encased in glass, snow falling gently outside the panes and candles all around as my husband asks me to guide him in a dance. A flickering oil lamp and heat-slick skin moving together, pleasure rising sharp andsweet, the roofless hideaway failing to keep out the cold but warm words pressed to my skin speaking of love and a forever I desperately wish to see. There’s a time so long ago much of its history is lost, where water lapped at the shore and a warrior appeared, everything I didn’t know I needed.
There’s another time, not far from now, a woman named Penelope having grown and a familiar face beside me, wrinkled and handsome, his lips pressing a kiss to my knuckles as he tells me how lovely it’s been, a life spent with me.
There’s pain, and there’s joy, and there’s love.
Love.
Love.
My vision blurs as Lee squeezes my hand tight, his own eyes wet with tears. “You already know what I’m going to say?”
“Yes,” I admit. “But I’d like to hear it all the same.”
He brings our clasped hands to his mouth, his kiss on my skin proof he knows exactly who he is, who I am, even if he can’t remember.
“I won’t pretend to understand what it is that brought you to me, Caspian. I can’t see it as you do. But I know my own heart. And I know you’ve told me nothing but the truth.”
I swallow roughly as Lee smiles, his breath warm on my skin.
“This is where you ask me the question, Caspian.”
My laugh comes out as a croak, my voice much the same. “Do you believe in fate, Lee?”
His eyes hold my own, brown and gold mixing in a hue I’d recognize anywhere. Any time. “I believe inyou, my love. Which is why I can say with absolute certainty… I love you. In this and every life.”
I inhale a shuddering breath, snowflakes drifting down around us like stars.
I remember the moment I first fell in love.
It wasn’t when I saw him for the first time. It wasn’t even the first time we kissed. It was simpler than all of that and infinitely more complex. It was moments we gathered between us. It was intention and a little bit of chance. It was a choice where I stood with my feet in the water and knew I could accept what was being offered or I could step away.
I wanted to be caught. Caught and kept close. I wanted to be loved, and I was. For millennia. Time and time again.
And I’ll be loved still, for an eternity to come.
