The word didn't make sense. I'd been dead for twenty years. Dead didn't come back. Dead didn't get heartbeats and second chances and—
The rhythm continued, steady and strong.
“Count with me,” Eli said, face breaking into a grin. “One, two, three, four…”
“I'm alive?” I asked, my voice breaking on the word. “I'm actually alive?”
“You're alive,” they said together.
And then I was sobbing, huge, wracking sobs that shook my whole body. My heart pounded harder with the emotion, faster, and I could feel it. I pressed my hand to my chest, feeling the rhythm beneath my palm.
“I can feel it,” I gasped between sobs. “I can feel my heartbeat. I forgot… I forgot what that felt like—”
Hunter was tearing up too, laughing and crying at the same time. “You're alive. You're really alive.”
Eli pulled us both close. “Twenty years,” he said into my hair. “Twenty years and you came back. You actually came back.”
I counted my heartbeats, each one a small miracle. Seventy-two times a minute, my heart was choosing life.
My heart. Mine. Beating.
“Can you feel anything else?” Hunter asked, wiping his eyes. “Do you need to breathe? Are you—”
And that's when I realized I was already breathing. Not because I remembered to, but because my body was doing it automatically. In and out, in and out, my lungs filling and emptying without conscious thought.
“I'm breathing,” I said in wonder. “And my heart is beating. And I need to—”
The sudden, urgent pressure in my bladder hit me all at once.
“I really need to pee.” I looked around in shock. “Like, really need to pee. Is that normal?”
Hunter laughed, the sound bright and beautiful and alive. “Yeah, that's normal. That's perfectly, wonderfully, humanly normal.”
I scrambled out of bed and ran to the bathroom, nearly crying with joy over something as mundane as urinating. When I came back, Hunter and Eli were talking quietly, seriously.
“What?” I asked, worried.
“We're discussing logistics. You need an identity. A job. A life.” Eli grinned. “I can help with the identity part. My cousin works for the state. Owes me a favor.”
“And I can get you work at the coffee shop,” Hunter added.
“You'd do all that?”
“Kris,” Eli said, reaching out to touch my cheek. “We just spent six hours fucking you into existence. Yes, we're going to help you get a library card.”
“And a bank account,” Hunter added. “And health insurance, though explaining your medical history will be interesting.”
“Twenty-year gap in records,” I said, lips curling up into a smile. “Could say I was in a cult. Or witness protection.”
“Or we could tell people the truth,” Eli suggested. “That you're our boyfriend who used to be a ghost.”
“Right, because that's believable.”
“In Austin?” Hunter laughed. “Austin prides itself on its weirdness, remember? A reincarnated ghost is practically normal around here.”
I sat on the bed between them, still naked, still processing. Still feeling my heart beat. “So what now?”
“Now,” Hunter said, pulling me back down, “we shower again. Together. Then breakfast. Then we figure out your new life.”
