“You did so good. You raised our babies, and you didsofucking good, Skylenna.”
Tears fall but his thumbs catch them as he cradles my face in his warm hands. He doesn’t rush me as he waits, his lips hovering over my mouth. Those dark brown eyes fixate on my mouth then back up to meet my stare.
I inhale sharply, melting in his hold.
I close the distance and kiss the man I’ve loved my whole life.
And it’s so much more than a kiss.
We are two halves of a star torn apart and hurled across galaxies. Our love reuniting could rewrite constellations. It’s Dessin. It’s Kane. It’s our souls melding back together.
And there it is.
Time is a tricky, ever-evolving beast. It is governed by itself, obeying a foreign set of rules. A law that exceeds any living being. And that law splits our minds into two lives. Two memories of existence. We have the one that Dessin couldn’t be a part of in his coma.
But time grants us the one he was a part of.
Within this kiss, that new life fills the empty spaces of that split mind. It etches into the crevices and weaves every epic memory of us together into our core thoughts.
In a single heartbeat, I live out our lives together.
Those photographs on the fireplace become my most sacred reminiscence.
After I gave Kane his memories back, we spent a couple of days in bed, making love—then went to see Ruth. We threw Marilynn a baby shower, and she threw ours. For Niles’s next birthday, Dessin took him hunting. Niles came back pissed that he killed a rabbit and wouldn’t speak to him for three days.
I told Kane and Dessin separately that I was pregnant. Kane found out while we played in the rain. I just told him. “You’re going to be a daddy!” In the thunderstorm, Kane dropped to the mud and sobbed into his hand. He thanked me for hours. “Thank you, Skylittle. Thank you for giving me a family.” And when I told Dessin under the stars after making love, I gave him baby booties I sewed myself. He laughed. Dessin threw his head back and howled at the moon, picking me up off the ground and spinning me around. And with my permission, he woke Chekiss up to shout that he was going to be a dad. He made love to me all night.
During my pregnancy, Kane massaged my feet every night so I could fall asleep. Dessin scoured Main Street to find the pastries I was craving. Greystone took care of my needs when I hit my second trimester and was aroused beyond belief.
I was in labor for thirty-two hours. The contractions were a form of unworldly torture, but Dessin kept me strong. He held me in every position until I delivered both of our babies. Kane was the first to meet them. In postpartum, Ruth and Warrose came to our home every week to help Chekiss watch the twins so Dessin and I could sleep, as the babies didn’t allow us to get much sleep.
Breastfeeding was difficult as I didn’t produce much milk at first. And with twins, that was a source of immense guilt and panic attacks that I wasn’t feeding my babies enough. But Dessin tore apart the library in the Demechnef mountain to read everything they had on lactation and postpartum. He came back with certain types of oatmeal pastries and herbal drink concoctions that would help me produce more milk. It worked. Kane cooked for me relentlessly, enough meals to ensure I kept myself replenished after giving so much to our newborns.
Ruth and Warrose threw us the kids’ first birthday party. Afterward, they loaned us a large boat at the shore. We took a small getaway of two nights to float along the coast and get drunk for the first time since before I was pregnant. Dessin worshipped my cunt at sunrise, drunkenly and lazily ravaging me until we passed out from exhaustion.
Sapphire and Krimson’s childhood was a pleasure to watch. Dessin babied Sapphire, treating her like his princess. But Krimson was his best friend. They hunted together, chopped wood, fished, and wrestled on the front porch. Kane let Sapphire dress him up and drink tea with her baby dolls. Dessin chewed Marilynn and Niles out for not disciplining Niklaus enough after the first time he made her cry. He threatened Sapphire’s teacher for not doing anything after that group of boys defiled her painting in front of the class. And he never, not once, ever let Niklaus get away with targeting his children.
Eventually, Dessin and I underwent several arguments over the strained relationship between those two. I was ashamed that I didn’t take the turmoil as seriously as he did. In fact, he didn’t speak to me for several days because of it. Eventually, we uncovered the damage the Demechnef extremists did to him when Niklaus was taken. I helped him heal and recover through the void, untangling and straightening out his twisted ideals of my daughter.
After a long journey of restoration from the Mind Phantoms, Niklaus and my daughter began dating and fell in love. Dessin did not accept this union for years. It took bullying from me, Niles, Ruth, Warrose, Marilynn, and Chekiss to get him to finally come around.
I see our entire lives fleshed out in front of me.
I see the arguments about what kind of mushed baby food to give to Sapphire and Krimson. I see flashbacks Dessin would get from the prison and asylum, the carousel switching, the days of dissociation over situations that would trigger him. The summer afternoons of Kane swimming in the lagoon with DaiSzek. The late-night talks with my husband and reminiscing over our days at the Emerald Lake Asylum when we fell in love.
We have lived two lives.
We remember both.
But the new memories chisel into our minds, attempting so very delicately to mend the wounds that his coma did to us.
“Did you see it?” I breathe against his lips.
“Yes, baby. I saw it.”
My kiss sparks a flame in the man I love, pulling us both under. He sighs into my mouth at the downpour of love from the me who lived without him to the me who never left his side. His lips open to me, tasting my tongue with an exquisite patience that sends heat spiraling down the center of my chest. It deepens and I arch against him, so fucking hungry to be with him again. To have all of him.
“So help me God, Skylenna,” he growls into my mouth. “I swear I’ll fucking rip your clothes off and make you mine all over again…”
