Moonlight painted her angelic face, highlighting her pouty lips and apple cheeks. Though her eyes were closed, he knew with absolute certainty that they were blue. Not just any blue, but sky blue. The color a man gazed up at when he was lying on the grass next to his woman, imagining their future together. Her honey-blond hair was loose and soft around her head, a little longer than he last remembered.
And heremembered.
John fell to his knees and reached out to her as if no time had passed between them.
As if death had not separated them.
As if she would open her eyes and fall into his arms.
Her lip began to quiver, even though she was sleeping.
“Can you hear me?” he whispered, stroking her face and wishing he could feel how silky it was beneath the press of his rough fingertips.
He always had to be gentle with her because she reminded him of a glass figurine in the palm of his hand, and John was a big man—a strong man. How had such a beautiful creature ever loved a man such as him?
How had he been so fortunate?
And so cursed.
He lowered his head, tears welling in his eyes. Tears that weren’t real since he no longer had a body, but the visceral grief ignored his ghostly limitations. How many years had passed between them?
Guilt consumed him for having left her behind—for leaving his love alone on this earth without someone to protect her, to hold her, to cherish her like no one else could.
A tear rolled across her nose, and her eyes slowly opened. She stared vacantly through him, and it broke his heart.
“I haven’t forgotten you,” he said, fighting through the sorrow. “I’m here, baby girl.”
Her blinks grew longer as she drifted between awake and asleep. When she rolled over and showed him her back, John circled the bed and crawled onto it, lying beside her.
He hadn’t done this in so long. Memories flooded back of their first night together.
And their last.
He wanted to wipe the tear away from her lashes, but he could only stare at it as a reminder of everything he’d lost.
“You look beautiful,” he said. “Even more than I remember. I missed your smile. Remember that time you made me dance in the middle of an outdoor café? I always had two left feet, and then I knocked over that table.”
She suddenly smiled, her blue eyes glittering.
He placed his hand over hers. “You were my best thing.”
She couldn’t hear him, couldn’t know that he was there, but John hadn’t felt such an overwhelming sense of peace in a long time.
“I miss you,” she whispered, her face contorting as she fought back tears. “But I don’t blame you. I just don’t understand why you had to go.”
“Me either,” he said, his voice cracking.
She blew out a calming breath, her lip swelling as it often did when she was upset. “We’ll be together again someday.”
John knew it to be true. In that moment, the fates somehow bestowed him the knowledge that he would be reborn to live as an immortal. They would find each other in the next life as they had in every life before, because they were meant to be.
He brushed his hand across her face, and she finally closed her eyes. “I’ll find you, baby girl.” He remembered the promise he’d given her on their first night together—that he’d always take care of her.
And he would.
For all eternity in each life.
As her breathing changed and she shifted into a deep slumber, he leaned forward and pressed a kiss to her forehead.
