Page 129 of The Sound Of Us

I set the book aside and settle into the bed, facing him. Tracing the outline of his face, I admire him in the near darkness. His small, straight nose. His long lashes. His sweet, pink lips, now open slightly. His hair… I now understand the sorrow in Mrs. Dalton’s words when she told me to never ask him to cut it.

I’m not a religious person, but I know Axel has always had faith in God. So, now, while I watch him sleep, I pray to his God and ask him to please let Axel’s hair grow out so he can have his curls back. I don’t ask for more years than what Axel will have. Only that the years that he is given be filled with every joy he could ever contain in his heart. That his belly will always be filled with the food he loves. That his face will always be radiant with his joy.

Tears fall, gathering at the corner of my eyes. The pillow catches my sorrow, holding them together in the wetness of the fabric.

I’ll love him until his last breath and even after that, I’ll love him. If there is an afterlife, I’ll search for him there and when I find him, I’ll never let him go. Then I’ll collude with death to let me have him forever.

Even now, if I could bargain with the devil for his life, I would. I would do anything to keep him here, in this world, where I can gaze at his beauty and tell him every day how very loved he is. How beautiful he makes the world. How every good thing to ever exist belongs to him. How deserving he is of every good thing.

I link my fingers with his, and sleep takes me into the place of dreams where Axel is healthy and well and safe with me.

Chapter 66

Axel

I’m an expert at whirlwind romances. One experience had been enough to qualify me for such a thing. So, when Eli held an engagement ring to my finger one night in bed, while he made love to me, I knew what it looked like to agree to marry someone after having known them for only six months.

But you can’t predict the future. All you can do is count the odds that are in your favour and listen hard to your own intuition. Your inner guidance system, no matter how faint that voice may be. So, that’s what I do.

I test my feelings of fear, insecurity, my sense of feeling stifled or uneasy, the way I’d been with Frank. I have none of them. Eli’s love for me is the same as him: calm, soft, grounded and sure.

His possessiveness and protectiveness of me isn’t the kind that isolates me from people around me. His regular check-ups bring with them a feeling of genuine concern. And my relationship with him isn’t some kind of flex to throw around for the public to consume.

So, when he held the ring to my finger while his cock was inside me, there was no answer I could have given, other than Yes.

My therapist said they generally don’t encourage a new relationship so soon after what I’d been through, but she understood that I don’t have a lot of time and that I needed to live now. So Eli and I worked on how I could rebuild a relationship with myself while in a committed relationship. He gave me the space I needed to figure out who I am. It’s a work in progress. I’m a work in progress and Eli supports me, even on those parts of my journey that I must walk alone. I'm going for driving lessons and I'm enrolled to finish school.

Eli worked relentlessly with me and the doctors to find new clinical trials that we could try. He got doctors from around the world to treat me. And I promised him that I would fight my hardest to live. To remain with him in this world as long as possible.

Chemo is awful. Worse than the last time. I feel like I’m getting sicker, but the results of the new clinical trials are promising. Right now, we don’t know, but there is more hope now than there had been before. Eli is the rock next to me that never moves.

Frank was wrong. Eli didn’t leave me. He stayed with me through every chemo session. Every doctor’s visit. He never missed a single joint therapy session.

I tell him every day how amazing he is. He tells me we shouldn’t praise basic human decency. That he’s not special for simply caring about me. That it’s the most basic thing any human being can and should do.

I know it’s that simple for him. Of course, he would love so selflessly. He’d been loved like that his whole life.

But for me, Eli isn’t a basic human being. He’s the one who saved me. Even as my body destroyed itself from the inside out, he strengthened the parts of me I thought had long been destroyed by Frank.

Never look back, is what Mrs. Dalton told me. It’s hard. Even though I’m the one dying, I still sometimes think about how Frank is doing.

My therapist tells me that I must grieve the death of hope. Not of the relationship, but of the hope of all that could have been.

She'd also said I must allow myself to grieve for the person I was when I was with Frank because leaving that version of me behind will feel like I've lost someone close to me. That the old me deserves as much grieving as if someone had actually died.

She told me that sometimes we don’t have the answers for why the things that happened to us did, but if that path led us to a place of peace and joy, then maybe we can learn to let go, little by little the pain of the past, and cultivate gratitude for where it’s brought us.

Also, that I’d lived in a kind of addictive cycle for so long, it isn’t uncommon to feel withdrawal symptoms like an addict might. That it will take time to coax my nervous system out of its default fight-or-flight mode. So, missing Frank and the good times sometimes isn’t something to be ashamed of. It’s just one more way my body and mind had been harmed and needed time to heal from.

I don’t know how much longer I have, but the new trials give me hope. With such rapid advancements in medicine and this new treatment, I have a better chance this time around.

“Are you alright?” Eli asks in sign as we dress for our wedding.

I move from the bed and go to him by the window, nodding.

Slipping my hands around his waist, I lift my face to his, studying him.

“Are you alright?”

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