Page 69 of Laced in Longing

I lift one foot and set it on the lip. The concrete’s gritty and wet, and my toes curl over the edge as my pulse throbs so hard in my throat I hear it over the wind.

More words rip out of me. “And yes, that’s your answer. That’s always been the answer; you can have me. I want to be in your world. I want the garden and the twilight and the food you keep talking about. I want to wake up in your bed and not be too tired to think about tomorrow. Yes.”

My eyes slip closed.

“So if you’re not coming, if this is it, and you’re done with me in this life—I don’t blame you—then find me in the next one. Find me fast, okay? Don’t wait for me to fall apart first. Come while I’m still bright, if I ever am. I swear on everything I will remember you, and the very first thing I’ll say is yes.”

My hands rest over my heart, the muscle having slowed considerably. There’s no fear in me any longer. I’ve stood in this exact spot with my body screaming at me to step back, and now there’s nothing but a wide-open ache pulling forward, and it feels like leaning into a warm doorway.

“Please come,” I whisper. “Please, please come.”

I lean. The wind catches my nightgown and hair in its grasp, and gravity grips me before I’ve finished falling forward. The roof slips away—fast, so much faster than I thought—a straight dark line shrinking against the sky, and I focus my eyes on it. I keep them right on the edge, waiting for a shape to appear; for a long black coat and two arms to come out of nowhere and yank me back with a voice at my ear telling me I don’t get to leave him.

Come on. Come on.

The edge narrows.

He’s not there.

Somebody screams. Not me, someone below me.

As the floors of my building fly by, and I sense the ground approaching, my eyes take one last look at the roof as I whisper, “Yes.”

Then pain, white-hot and all-encompassing, drenches me for a fraction of a second before everything goes black.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

MAVEN

Something’s crushing me.

It’s not like when I wake at 3:00 a.m. to the horrid weight of anxiety. No, this is almost…soothing.

A blanket? I think. A heavy one, tucked around me in such a way that I’m now a burrito.

And the smell…soft and clean. The air itself possesses a gentle quality as it caresses my face and the eyes I haven’t yet opened. My brain runs through the last coordinates of my body, then all the places I’ve ever been when none of those make sense. Where am I? And why do I feel so calm?

Gentle light greets my eyes as they shoot open. I jumped off a building. Nothing hurts…there was such intense pain when I hit the ground, physically and mentally. Then nothing. Now, there’s no aching, no cracked lips—well, no cracked anything. My body feels like it just woke from the best sleep its ever had, which is honestly rude, given the circumstances.

So, dead then. I’m dead.

With careful movement, I sit up.

The room I’m in is enormous. It reminds me of how castles appear in movies, but it’s not showy in the same way—there’s no gold or jewels, nothing that screams royal and egotistical at me. But the ceiling reaches so high that the tip of it is swallowed by shadow. The walls are dark stone gray, cool-toned, with pale veins running through them, partially hidden by a shelf and art.

The bed I’m in could sleep five people and a horse. A huge cloud would be the best description of it.

There’s a window across from me, arched at the top, and beyond it the sky is the color of post-sunset—such a specific blue-violet that photographers would kill to capture. It’s beautiful. Reminds me of the times during high school when I’d sit next to the lake and wait for this exact moment, knowing I’d at least get a small amount of happiness for the day before going back to whatever foster house I was in at the time.

A silky texture catches my attention, and I look to my abdomen. I’m still wearing the nightgown I had on when I jumped. Not a scratch or smear of dirt on it, though. Strange.

My arms are next, and I turn them over slowly, palms up. The scars remain, but it’s interesting that there’s no new ones.

I don’t know what I expected. Some kind of factory reset, maybe—a clean version of me that developed proper self-awareness as a child and hadn’t yet marred my body from my weak mental state. But no. The thin silver ladders are exactly where I left them on the inside of my left forearm, along with the shiny round burn near my elbow, and the mess of scars on my thighs.

Okay, I think. So I brought myself with me. Wherever this is.

I’m having a hard time believing this is my next life, mostly because I wouldn’t remember everything that happened in the previous one. Wouldn’t be haunted by how I died.