Page 44 of Laced in Longing

“Your suffering in this realm is solely because you don’t belong in it.” There’s a tense edge to his tone. “Your soul is trying to find its way home, and this world keeps rejecting it, like a body rejecting a transplanted organ. The pain you feel is the dissonance between what you are and where you are.”

I press the heels of my hands against my eyes, trying to block out his words so I might have a moment of peace. Because if he’s right, then what has it all been for? The years of therapy, the dozens of medications, the desperate attempts to find somewhere I fit. Someone who wanted me. The scars on my wrists and thighs, or the nights spent staring at bottles of pills and wondering if this time, I’d have the courage to take them all.

What was the point of it if I was never meant to be here in the first place?

News flash: there was no point—is no point. Nothing is real and none of it matters, least of all my silly attempts at normalcy. Whatever that is.

“I can’t do this,” I say, dropping my hands to stare at the floor. “I can’t keep having this conversation a million times. There’s too many things without answers, and I do not have the energy to seek them.”

“Then come with me,” Ash pleas as his form reaches for me. Maybe if he could touch me this would be easier. “Leave this uncertainty behind. Come to where you belong.”

“And if you’re wrong?” I challenge, glaring at the draping fabric. “If I go with you and discover that I don’t belong there either? That I’m just as miserable and empty in your world as I am in this one? What then, God?”

He’s silent for a long moment, his spine straightening. “Then I would return you here.” A deep breath. “I would not keep you against your will, Maven. Never that.” But he’ll stay here against my will.

Though, is it really ever against my will if some part of me wants it?

The sincerity in his voice makes something twist painfully in my gut. He believes what he’s saying—believes in me and us. He’s spent centuries waiting for me, lifetime after lifetime, rejection after rejection.

And what have I done? Moved to a million cities, a new job each time, never settling into a permanent routine. I’ve not once connected to anything or anyone, always running from something I don’t deserve. Always feeling like I was searching for something just beyond my reach.

What if that something was him?

And if he’s wrong…if this is all some elaborate delusion or manipulation…then I’ve truly lost everything, including my grip on reality itself.

I can’t breathe. The walls of the apartment squeeze my throat, the air too thick to pull into my lungs. My heart hammers so hard I feel the throb of it at the base of my neck.

“I need air,” I gasp, heaving myself up from the floor. My legs shake beneath me, threatening to give way. “I need to think.”

Ash rises in one fluid motion, concern evident in the tilt of his head. “Maven⁠—”

“Don’t,” I cut him off with a raised hand. “Just—don’t say anything else. Please.”

He nods, stepping back to give me space. I move past him on unsteady legs to the hallway. Instead of reaching for the stairs, I aim for the door that leads to the roof. I need sky above me. Perhaps the cold will shock my system back to something acceptable.

The stairwell is freezing, though it doesn’t stop me. Nor do the icy metal steps against my socked feet. I didn’t grab my coat or shoes, but I barely notice the cold. My mind races too fast for physical discomfort to register.

Is this what I want? To wake up each day to the same emptiness, no matter where I am, and feeling the same sense of wrongness that has followed me since childhood. I swallow pills that don’t help and see therapists who can’t understand.

And now this—him.

I can’t tell if he’s made everything worse by baring his truth or just made it all clear to me.

Either way, it’s too much. All of it. I’m so fucking sick of the constant effort of pretending to be normal when every interaction feels like speaking a language I’ve never learned. It’s so unbelievably exhausting to fight against the current of my own thoughts day after day.

I’m. So. Tired.

The door to the roof groans from rusty hinges. Tears stream down my face, freezing against my skin so quickly that mounds form on my cheeks.

I can’t breathe, I can’t think.

What kind of life is this? Not one worth fighting for.

I shuffle to the edge of the roof, where the low wall rises just a few inches above the surface. One small step and there would be nothing between me and the six-story drop to the pavement below. One moment of courage—or cowardice—and this particular version of Maven Talmay would cease to exist.

I mean, if Ash is right, I’ll just be reborn again. Another chance at a life that might be better, might be worse, but would at least be different from this endless cycle of emptiness and pain. And if he’s wrong, if death is truly the end…

Well, that would be a relief too.