“Fuck, I think I’m gonna come.” He’s grinding his length against mine, panting. “Say it again, angel. Say it again.”
“I love you. I love you so much.”
Rowan cries out as he suddenly climaxes, and I let him devour my skin as he rocks our bodies together.
I’m home. Finally—we are both home.
Epilogue
Elijah
Come home, baby,” I can hear Mom whisper to me.
“Okay, it’s time. I’ll join you now, so don’t worry.” I can feel the flood of relief filling my chest. I think I’ll watch the sunset as I fall. “Goodbye,” I whisper.
“BENJAMIN!” My head snaps to the right, just over my shoulder. Aaron is standing there, reaching for me. He’s about 25 feet away, just now entering the area of dirt that leads up to the bridge and is inaccessible to vehicles.
“One more step and I fall,” I say, so calmly. When I raise one foot just a bit, Aaron panics.
“Okay! Okay! I’m staying here—fuck, I won’t move, I promise,” he insists. I’m watching him, and he looks miserable. I’ve never seen him look so afraid, so distraught. Not even as he stood over my drugged body.
“Why did you come? You can’t stop me.”
He’s pleading to me with his eyes, hands trembling as they stay reached out for me. “Please—I need you to come home. Please.”
I shake my head. “Aaron, it’s time. This has been a long time coming.”
Aaron groans in frustration. “I know I can’t fix it, Button, but I can help you handle it. I’ll help you. But stay. Stay with me,please.”
My chest is hurting now—my peace half replaced by his pain. Our souls are so forged together that we share even that.
“You’ve always fixed it. Everything all the time.” I turn back to the setting sun. “I can understand why it’s frustrating that you can’t fix this. Can’t command me off the ledge. It’s not your fault I died, Aaron.”
“YOU’RE NOT DEAD! Stop saying it like you’ve already jumped!” he shouts. The irony of the statement—the way it feels so perfectly accurate to me.
“But I have. I jumped the moment she touched me. I just spent a while holding onto the ledge.”
He cries, kicking a rock at his feet and narrowing his eyes at me as I look back at him. “Then why? Why fucking wait?”
I love him so much. I love him so much that his anger warms me—gifts me a gentle smile, fills my heart.
“I was hoping love was enough to make life worth it,” I answer calmly, and Aaron’s eyes grow wide, and as he looks at me in such devastation, he falls to his knees. “It was. Until that night. Now, there is nothing. No love is worth what this is doing to me, what it’s doing to you.”
His face is soaked in tears, his hands clasped together in front of him.
“That night did nothing to me but make me want to protect you even harder—to take care of you, tolove you moreif I possibly could. To be a better man. But this—thisis destroying me, Benjamin. This willkill me.”
My eye twitches, and I can feel that peace slipping away more and more. “Aaron, stop. Go home.”
“No! If you get to jump, I get to speak. Don’t you remember what you said? What you told me?I love you so much I could die. So much that now I want to live.That’s what you said. Do you not love me anymore? Am I not enough?” he questions me, a knife twists in my chest as I feel the hot tears start to collect in my eyes.
“You know that’s not it—”
“No. I know nothing because you tell me nothing. Please, Button. Come here.”
There is some part of me that wants him to hold me so badly—wants him to stop crying, to stop looking at me like I’m crushing him from the inside out. It’s clawing its way up my throat, trying to get out of me. I feel anger—anger that I got so close again and have another obstacle. Why can’t I just die?
“Shut up!” I scream, tears falling again. “You’re so fucking unfair, Aaron! Itried. I tried for months to live with the constant reminder of her. The feel of her hands, the sound of her voice, how fucking terrifying it was to not be able to move—to scream.” I’m sobbing now, staring at the sun as it’s disappearing under the horizon. The streetlamp turns on. “Is that not worth anything to you? Icouldn’tdo it. In the end, I really could onlytake so much, baby. You can’t take this from me—you can’t fix it. It has nothing to do with loving you and everything to do with being able to see past my own terror to find you in the first place.”
