I force a few steps, but even though I know this is right, tears surface.
He’s so close. His world is three steps away. I know he’s there on the other side of this invisible divide, equally heartbroken. I know he’ll understand why I did it. I know he will. But some stupid, desperate, miserable part of me reaches out a hand anyway, thrust into the empty air, as if I could touch him, sense him, let him sense me. Give him the goodbye I couldn’t stand to give him.
The fingers of my outstretched hand widen, desperate for sensation, for the sense of August, my other half, a universe away but so close. One final touch before I’m gone.
They meet nothing. Nothing but empty air, strewn with particles I can’t see or feel, invisible markers that ruled and ruined my life.
Closing my eyes, I conjure the image of him.
My fingers curl, closing on the emptiness, the loss of my only love.
Then all reality breaks apart as a firm hand takes mine.
My heart flies into my throat, eyes flinging open. His hand’s on my cheek. August kissing me, August pushing me back, his kiss so desperate, so punishing, that I can’t take a breath, can’t fathom that this is happening, that he’s come for me.
“What the hell are you doing?” he snaps. Both his hands grasp my face, and before I can speak, more kisses, kisses I don’t have the strength or wherewithal to fight, that I yield to, slip into, bodily.
This cannot be real.
I’ve gone mad, or it’s some hallucination caused by weird particles…
“Look at me. Are you alright, August?”
My eyes search his, real and alive and terrified. “August… you can’t be here.”
“Did you really think I’d let you do that? Just slip out of my life like that? Not in a million eternities.”
The world crashes in on me. August in the same shirt. August, his hair wild with stress and exhaustion. August, just as I’d left him. Seconds ago. “What have you done? You weren’t supposed to follow me.”
“I love you! I love you too much, and I’m not losing you to some random universe.”
“You can’t be here. This is why I came here—I came to buy you time.”
“And that’s you all over—sweet and true and wonderful, and so good you don’t even know it. But there’s no multiverse without you in it. I’m not putting a thing back, not unless you’re there by my side.”
“August, you cannot destroy worlds for me.”
“I said I would, and I will. I’ll do anything to be with you. Don’t leave me. Not ever again. You’re all the world there is. You’re all the life there is. You’re the only reason I can keep going.”
His tears blend with mine when he kisses me again, and I’m powerless. He can’t mean it. He’s gone insane, surely, with everything that’s happened to him all these lonely years. All the years of searching and failure, all the years of death and destruction. Complete obliteration.
I know what he’s found here, between us, in my arms. I can give him so much love. I can hold him, care for him, put him back together piece by piece. But we are now, and always will be, on stolen time. Someone else’s time. Someone else’s world.
Impossible.
That word has marked us forever.
Only he doesn’t feel impossible beneath my hands. He feels like all the hope and all the dreams I never had. He feels like alast shot at opportunities squandered, the last song of the night, a stolen moment on Primrose Hill beneath the stars.
Running my fingers through his hair, looking into the eyes I’ve come to adore, my own eyes that I never thought I could love this way, I tell him, “We don’t have time. There must be three of us in this world now. August, we don’t have time.”
“I don’t care.” He holds his palm to my cheek feverishly, his thumb tracing my lower lip. “If I’m going out, I’m going out with you. I want to die by your side. I want you to be the last thing I see, the last person I touch. I want to hold you, and the universe will have to tear me to pieces before I’ll ever let go of you again.”
“Oh, August…” I kiss him, gripping him tighter. “You love me too much.”
“No,” he whispers. “I love you just the right amount.”
My heart’s so full it could explode. It’s wrong, all of it. From day one, this has been wrong. But it’s felt so right to me. Even now, some stupid part of me believes we could get out of this—refuses to accept our assured destruction. Because in all the universes, it makes no sense that we’d come together for no reason. Love like this can’t just happen. It can’t mean nothing. It can’t be inconsequential when it feels like everything.
