“How are you feeling?” she asked as if it was me lying in this bed, dying slowly.
I swallowed the burning rage that settled in my throat. “I’m okay, Soph. Don’t worry about me.”
She frowned, her lips thinning into a straight line, and before I could even blink, she moved, settling herself right in front of me, and pulled my hands into her lap.
“You didn’t kiss me today.” She smirked.
“You were asleep.” I tried to smile, but by the expression on her face I knew it looked more like a grimace than a smile. “I didn’t want to wake you.”
The truth was, I was terrified to touch her. I was terrified that she wouldn’t touch me back, that she wouldn’t have any warmth in her anymore. I was fucking scared to death that every kiss I gave her would be the last one.
This wasn’t the story of a sleeping beauty, and I knew that the moment we were all dreading was already upon us. In this story, my beauty wouldn’t open her eyes after she falls into an eternal slumber.
In this story, I wasn’t a prince that could wake her by the sheer power of love.
I liked to believe that love conquered all evil, and that it could prevail even in the hardest of times. But this… Love couldn’t heal this.
“Are you hungry?” I asked her instead, moving the hair from her face and tucking it behind her ear. “Your mom was making dinner for all of us.”
But she didn’t answer. Seconds and minutes passed of the two of us just looking at each other, and just like a child too impatient to wait, she pulled herself closer until our chests touched.
I put one hand on her waist, while the second one still kept touching her face—her cold, cold face.
“I want you to kiss me, Noah.”
Her breath washed over my lips, our noses inches away from each other.
“I want to feel your lips on mine, baby.” She lifted her gaze and looked at me. “Please?”
I was never one to be able to deny her anything, and without a preamble, without a warning, I pulled her head closer to me and pressed my lips against hers. Her dry lips fought with mine; our tongues collided, while she ran her hands over my body, shaking beneath my hands.
I bit on her lower lip and then soothed it with my tongue, keeping a tight grip on her hair. I pulled her head backward and latched my lips onto her neck, leaving a trail of kisses all the way to her collarbone and back up her neck, back to her lips.
“I love you, Sophie,” I murmured. “I love you so much.”
“I know.” She nodded and pressed her forehead against mine. “And I love you, too. Always, Noah. Don’t ever doubt that.”
My eyes closed, while her hands played with the hair on the back of my neck.
There was something sitting on my chest; something heavy, something I never felt before. Was this what heartbreak felt like?
Her breathing was much faster now, as if she ran a marathon. How fucked up was it that one day you were a healthy, young person, and in the next one you find out that there was something inside of you, eating at you, killing you softly?
I had no idea how much time passed as the two of us held each other like that, inhaling each other’s air, just existing. But reality came knocking at our door a lot faster than I would want it to, and as the door opened, revealing her dad standing there, I knew that they needed this time with her maybe even more than I did.
I had no idea how much it could possibly hurt, watching your child going through this. Parents should never be the ones burying their children. It was monstrous, unnatural, completely against all the laws of the universe, yet here we were, waiting for the other shoe to finally drop.
“I’ll be downstairs,” I said and placed a kiss on her cheek. “I think you should talk to your parents.”
“I think so, too.”
I stood up from the bed and started walking toward the door, looking at her father who kept his eyes trained on Sophie.
He aged over these last few months. Maybe if you didn’t know him from before you wouldn’t see the difference, but I did.
His hair had a lot more gray streaks now than it did before. Those empty eyes spoke the story of a hollow soul that could only be told by those that found themselves in situations like these.
“Daddy,” I could hear Sophie speaking just as I started closing the door. I turned my back to it, when it hit me like a freight train.
