Page 64 of Laced in Longing

I cough, rolling onto my back. The ceiling has a water stain shaped like a rabbit—or maybe a fist? Either, depending on how blurry I make my vision by squinting. For the millionth time today, my stomach cramps, long and hard. When was the last time I ate? There was the granola bar at work days ago…and aside from the random gulps of water when I manage to go to the bathroom, I’ve consumed nothing else.

Oh well. It doesn’t matter. Food is a thing that people who have reasons to keep their bodies running need, and I’m fresh out of those.

A laugh bubbles up from my throat, bitter in its nature. I’ve spent twenty-seven years perfecting the art of feeling nothing, and it took a month for him to shatter that defense completely. Now I’m drowning in emotions and sensations I’ve never allowed myself to experience.

Grief. That’s the primary one. A bone-deep sorrow that makes every cell in my body waterlogged and bloated. I’ve known sadness before—it’s been my constant companion since childhood—but this is different. This is loss. The knowledge that I had something precious and threw it away with both hands.

A fresh cramp of something worse than hunger twists through my gut, and I curl back onto my side because at least when I’m folded up, I can convince myself it’s not as bad as it is.

My thoughts spiral.

Ash never once demanded anything of me. He could have. He’s a god; an actual god and he possesses a presence that influences strangers to move out of his way on a crowded sidewalk without even seeing him. Yet he’s spent centuries watching me pick the wrong thing every single time, always allowing me the choice. If it were me, I’d have given up immediately. Collected the soul the second I got the chance, permission be damned. But not him. He waited. He kept coming back, offering yet never taking, never pushing past the line I drew, even when the line was arbitrary and cruel and drawn by a woman who can’t tell her own wants from her own fears.

I love you, Maven. Please don’t do this again.

He begged me on that roof. A god. Begging. I stepped off anyway, and he caught me, because of course he did.

The memories keep coming too, which is its own special kind of torture. They arrive without warning—I’ll be staring at the rabbit-fist water stain one moment before I’m somewhere else entirely the next, wearing a body that isn’t quite this one but is, feeling things that aren’t mine but are. Yesterday I lost an hour to one. There was a garden. Not his garden in the Otherworld he’s described in detail, but one on Earth. It was full of the most beautiful, enormous drooping flowers, and I was laughing with my whole chest. Ash pretended to be affronted about something, arms crossed under that same long coat, and the version of me that I was reached up to run a hand through the phantom veil where his mouth should be and said something that made him go still and soft. The words were lost to me as his palpable happiness filled the atmosphere. Its fullness was thrilling, forcing a smile on my face as I snapped back to my grimy floor with my grimy shirt and embarrassing grief.

In every memory, he’s so sweet and careful. Thoughtful and patient. All for versions of me that didn’t deserve a fraction of it, because I keep abandoning him to go do it all over again, and again, and again.

What have I done?

I groan as another surfaces.

The market bustles around us, vendors calling out their wares in unfamiliar languages. Silks, spices, fruits, and trinkets I’ve never seen before spread out far before me. The air smells of cardamom and saffron, with a hint of woodsmoke. It’s so real. Rich and complex, when I know for a fact Ash and I are lying in the grass behind my home. He’s only showing me a memory of his. This is our version of a physical connection.

Ash walks beside me, his face covered as always.

That’s the one thing that remains consistent through every memory: his veil. Through thousands of years, I’ve yet to know his face.

Until now, I suppose. Sort of. Studying it with my fingers on that rooftop is the closest I’ve come to knowing what he truly looks like.

He’s dressed simply—a casual linen shirt and dark trousers—blending with the crowd. He’d look out of place if he were wearing his usual formal attire.

“What about these?” I ask, pausing at a stall filled with flowers. My fingers brush the petals of a bloom I don’t recognize—deep purple with a black center, its edges tinged with gold. It’s stunning.

I feel him grin. “Twilight anemones,” he says, his voice warm with approval. “They grow only in the Otherworld, hence their name. They’re nearly impossible to cultivate in the mortal realm.”

My eyes flit to him as something mischievous seizes my smile. “Is that a challenge?”

He laughs, the sound beautiful and fulfilling. “Always testing boundaries, my flower. Very well. I’ll bring you seeds, but don’t be disappointed when they fail to thrive.”

“They won’t fail,” I counter with a confidence that surprises my current self. “Not with me tending them.”

I sense his expression softening as a hand rises to brush a strand of hair from my face. It doesn’t work, obviously, but the thought of his touch sends warmth cascading through me. A visceral reaction to his proximity and the idea of what it would be like to actually feel him. “No,” he agrees. “Not with you.”

The memory fades, leaving me gasping on the floor as tears flow faster. That version of me was so different from who I am now. Confident. Happy. Unafraid to tease Ash or accept his touch and praise without flinching.

What happened to her? To me? How did I go from that vibrant, self-assured woman to…this? This worthless shell who can’t even appreciate his actual touch?

I know what happened, though. Ash made it clear over and over again that lifetimes of my soul residing where it doesn’t belong has drained it to the point of desolation. My fingernails dig into my palms; the sharp pain is a needed contrast to the ache in my heart.

Once again, this is all my fault.

I press the heels of my hands into my eyes, the pressure offering me something to focus on that isn’t the gaping hole I cannot breathe through. My skin is too tight and hot, constant prickles crawling under the surface. That awful ants-taking-over-my-body sensation I get when emotions pile up faster than my mind can handle them. I want to claw out of my skin; peel this life away like the shirt I can’t bring myself to rip off.

I suffer, I think at him, wherever he is now in his twilight world. But you suffer worse, don’t you. Because you remember. I get to forget between lives. I wake up fresh, with a blank slate, and I don’t know I’ve done this to you a thousand times. But you know. You carry every single one.