Xavier frowned, the first to process my warning. He immediately pulled his own gun out of his pants and whirled around to face Ryan.
Everything happened very fast.
Too fast. Two gunshots rang out, making us all tremble. I stopped abruptly and watched as Ryan slowly hit his knees, the gun falling from his limp fingers.
He’d been shot in the abdomen, but his cold eyes looked past Xavier to stare intensely at me. His swollen lips mouthed an almost imperceptible “game over” at me.
What…what was he talking about?
“Neil!” It was Luke’s shout that made me understand that the game was, indeed, over. And we had lost.
I stared at Neil’s body, his wounded face, his eyes still locked on me.
I ran to him just as his legs were giving out and grabbed him around the waist as he sagged against me.
A viscous moisture spread in the place where our bodies were plastered together. I glanced down and saw a red stain growing across the front of his white sweater.
That was where Ryan’s bullet had struck him: right in the chest.
“Neil,” I mumbled as he stared deeply into my eyes, a silent farewell. His body collapsed, drained of all strength, and slowly, gently, I loweredhim to the ground. I knelt down next to him and cradled his head in my lap. “Neil…” I said again. He was still there with me, I could tell because he blinked and his eyes roved over my face.
“My love…can you hear me? Stay awake. Talk to me. Do anything, but just please don’t go to sleep.” I stroked his cheek. He looked dazedly into the darkness of the sky and swallowed weakly. His breathing was slow, his gaze absent as though searching inwardly for more strength. But all of his had been swallowed up by the curse that was his life.
There was no one around us then. Just me and Neil, marooned in our Neverland.
I touched his face and his injured mouth, and he groaned in pain. I gave him an apologetic look.
“Neil, you can’t pull any dirty tricks on me now, understand?” I murmured around the knot in my throat. “I can’t do this without you. You know that I…” I stopped myself before I could say “I love you.” Small, simple words that he refused to hear from me because they reminded him of Kim and what she’d done to him.
But I do. I love you. I love you not just for the person that you are but for the person that I become when I am with you.
I wanted to tell him all of it, but I resisted the urge once again because I knew he couldn’t take it.
“Selene…” he said in a soft whisper as I continued stroking his cheek. Tears began to pour down my cheekbones, the ocean in my eyes draining away with every labored breath he took. “I know…how you feel. No need to say it.” He understood me; he had always understood me, and he was the only one. “Ya pihi irakema,” he went on, and my brow furrowed in confusion. I had no idea what he meant—it sounded like he was speaking another language. “The…Yanomami people…that’s what they say when…when…it means, ‘I have been contaminated by your being.’” A coughing fit forced him to stop, and I stroked his hair soothingly, and he gulped before continuing. “It means…that a part of you is with me forever. It lives and grows inside me,” he managed. His chest was heaving, but slowly, so slowly, and there was nothing I could to do to stop the terrible thing that was happening to him except cling to the thin hope that a miraclemight occur.
Neil’s eyelids drooped, as though he were about to sleep, and I touched him gently, trying to keep him with me.
“Don’t go to sleep. Help is coming, okay? We’re going to be okay. You’re going to be okay.” I kept touching his face all over, trying to transmit my love to him through the skin. His skin was still warm. His heart was still beating. He was still right there with me, just like the stars watching us from above and the moon that held court over the entire world. Even the unfair parts. Even the cruel parts.
“I always told you that I never…say I’m sorry, but I guess…now’s the time to do that. I’m so sorry for…everything I’ve put you through.” He gave me a weak smile and another groan of pain. “Don’t cry, Tinkerbell…it’s not over yet. Remember…” he went on in a small, almost inaudible whisper. “The planetarium?” My vision was starting to blur as I floated in a sea of misery, trying not to drown. Salty tears dripped down and fell from my chin. He lifted his arm and used his index finger to gather them up, collecting them as if to take them with him.
Wherever he decided to go.
“Yes, I remember.” I couldn’t stop crying. The pain was a tearing, wrenching thing, a cord pulled tight around my throat.
I was choking. I was drowning.I was dying.
“Promise me that you’ll keep watching the stars. That you’ll fight against the pain and not let anything block your dreams…” he whispered. I squeezed his hand, and he wove his fingers into mine, forever. We were forever, etched high in the sky. We were immortal because love is an immortal thing. “That you’ll…draw a shell with its pearl when you feel lonely. That you’ll forgive me because…if I could do it again, I wouldn’t make the same mistakes.” His golden eyes turned glassy, the impenetrable wall of pride collapsing right in front of me.
The knight had laid down his shield at my feet. He stood before me, still gleaming, and offered up the little golden chest in which he had always hidden all his feelings.
“Promise me that…you’ll let me live inside you too. Think of me when you eat pistachios or find a shell on the beach or open a fortune cookie…”He grinned again, and his breath grew fainter and fainter. He was fighting hard to keep breathing and to keep his eyes open, and I touched him encouragingly again. I knew that he was strong. I knew he could do it.
He had to do it.
“Neil, keep talking to me. Stay right here. Don’t close your eyes.” I kissed his sweat-slick forehead and held him close to me. My heart pounded against my ribs, and the unceasing tears continued to flow. I blinked hard so I could see his face—his beautiful face—clearly again.
An angel—that’s what he was.
