Page 39 of Breaking the Limits

“He’s lost too much blood.”

The last things I remember hearing before the eerie calm washes over me. Images of Kynlee flash through my mind, almost like a movie and it’s like I can hear her voice, feel her laughter in my soul. My lungs turn to fire, burning the images of Kynlee…

My eyes open and to my surprise, I’m lying on the beach. The sun beaming down on my face, my body soaking up the heat, the sound of the waves crashing on the shore soothing my soul. Then I hear it, the unmistakable laugh that ishers. I jolt up into a sitting position as my eyes follow the sound. There she is, her medium length chestnut colored hair pulled back into a messyponytail, her bright blue eyes crinkled in the corners as she laughs, her smile big and bright just like I remember it. “Mom?”I choke out and she turns to face me.

The sunlight creates a halo around her and I’ve never been more certain in my belief of angels. She has on her favorite white sundress with her pink and white polka dot cardigan over it. My heart swells at the sight of her. I jump up and run towards her, pulling her into my arms, inhaling her scent that always reminds me of her. I tower over her now, that’s something new. “Oh, my sweet boy” she says, as she pulls back and looks me in the eye.

“Mom? I can’t believe you’re here…or that I’m here,” I say, as I look around. I take in the beach, it’s the spot that she used to bring us to on the weekends as soon as the weather was warm enough and dad had to work. She’d pack up some food and load us in the car and bring us here. When she first came down sick, she’d tell me that she’d always be with me even when she wasn’t, to look for her in the waves crashing on the shore of this beach and that if I listened closely I’d hear her laughter. She said it’s where she’d wait for us all. “Mom, am I…dead?”

A sad look fills her eyes and she shakes her head slightly. “No, my sweet boy, at least not yet. I wanted to see you while you were in…well, I don’t know what you are right now but I do know our time is limited.” She looks up at me and I see so much in her stare. “You’re all grown up and so handsome.” She caresses my cheek and I rest my head against it. “So, tell me how you got here?”

My throat is thick with emotion so I clear it before speaking. “Well, I got jumped, beat and stabbed, then left in the parking lot.” I watch as tears spring into her eyes and instantly I’m trying to calm her, placing my hands on her shoulders, and leaning down so she can see into my eyes. “I’m fine really. It’s not that big of a deal. I might have even deserved it after the ass I’ve been.”

“Ace William James you better not be an ass to anyone. I raised you better than that,” she scolds me, and a piece of anger flares up. I release her and start to walk down the beach away from her. “Ace!” she calls after me.

“Mom, please just don’t.”

“Don’t what?” she asks.

I growl in frustration. “Don’t tell me how I was raised because you weren’t there. I wasn’t raised by you. You left me! You were all I had in this world, the only person who understood me or at least tried to!” My voice cracks and I feel like I’m nine-years-old again running home after school to read to my mom only to find that she’s gone. “You left and I had no one! Dad, Axell, Bowie, Jagger, they tried but they couldn’t…. I needed you. I loved you.”

She steps toward me just as a sob wracks my body. Her arms come around me and she is pulling me into her. She kisses my cheek and mummer’s apologies into my ear. I cry like I haven’t cried since I left the cemetery in Axell’s arms. “I’m so sorry my sweet boy. You’ll never know how sorry I am that I haven’t been there, that I didn’t get to watch you grow and become the man you are today. I loved you and your brothers with everything I had but I was just too weak. I fought as hard as I could. There wasn’t a day when I was alive that I didn’t wish I could make the cancer disappear. That I could be there for you, to kiss your ouches, watch you go on your first date, stand by and let your dad teach you how to drive, slap some sense into you when you got your first speeding ticket, beam with pride as you walked across a stage to graduate, fall in love and get married, have kids of your own,” she takes a shaky breath. “I wanted all of that so badly. I got so little time with all of you, my precious boys but this is how it was meant to be. I can’t tell you why but please always remember how much I love you.”

I look away and out over the ocean. “I don’t believe in love.”

I hear her suck in a sharp breath. “Ace, you can’t mean that.”

Shrugging my shoulders, I tell her, “I do. Why are you shocked by that?”

“Because love…love is the one thing that makes life worth it. It makes all the pain, grief, and anger...all of it worth it. Without love you have nothing.”

Anger flares again. “And with it you are broken! It rips your heart out. It kills you slowly from the inside. If you love then eventually you lose and the pain is unbearable.”

“Oh Ace,” she says, in her soothing tone while taking my hand in hers. “Love is painful but it’s so worth it. I won’t lie and say you won’t ever get hurt, but I will tell you that the hurt is worth it. If you never love because the fear of losing is too great than you’re not living and I want you to live, my sweet boy. Love is scary. Love is giving someone the most vulnerable and fragile piece of you and trusting them to protect it, to love it, to cherish it but people make mistakes and sometimes it gets broken but it doesn’t change the fact that love is worth it.”

I shake my head. “It’s not that simple. You didn’t lose when you died, we did and it changed us.”

“Life changes regardless of what you feel, Ace. You live and learn, you love and hurt, you win and lose, you make the best out of what you have even on your worst day. When life slams the breaks on you, you change the gears and find another road. Life is a beautiful, crazy ride that is over all too soon. You blink your eyes and years have passed you by. You still have a chance to live and I want that for you. You can say you don’t want love but you chased Kynlee even after she told you not to.” I give my mom a questioning look. “Oh please, I’m your mother, I know everything,” she says, giving me a shrug. “My point is you chased after Kynlee because you feel nothing for her?”

The intensity of her stare is too much so I turn to look back at the ocean. My mom being my mom always knows when to stayquiet to let me figure things out on my own. Finally, I turn back toward her, “What Kynlee and I have…is…different.”

My mom scoffs, “Different or not, you still love her.” I feel my eyes go wide at hearing her say that. Confusion and shock feel my soul. “Ace don’t be so silly. Kynlee is different for you because it means more to you and if you ask me that’s a great thing.” I sway a little as I start to feel lightheaded. My mom’s blue eyes fill with tears as she looks at me. “Sit down, the feeling is only going to get worse, our time is almost up. Before you have to go, I need to tell you something and you need to listen to me. You, Ace James, are one of the best people I know with the heart the size of the world, and if there’s anyone in the world that deserves love it is you my sweet boy. I want you to promise me that you will live and love to the limits! I want nothing else for you,” she says, as she pulls my head to her shoulder and presses a kiss on top of my head. My head is spinning so fast I can barely keep my eyes open. “Lie back, it’ll help.”

“Mom?” I ask, but it sounds more like a whimper.

“Shh…remember to look for me here, listen for me in the waves. I love you my beautiful, sweet boy,” she tells me, before I feel as if I’m being pulled under the sand, buried under it, I try to scream back out to her but my throat becomes clogged with sand.

My eyes open and I take in the world around me.

White walls.

Machines beeping.

Tubes and wires coming out of me from every direction.

My body aches and hurts.

When I move my head to the side, I realize I can barely see out of my eye from swelling but there she is. Her head resting on the side of my bed, her hand wrapped around mine, her long brown hair splayed across the white sheet. She’s here, she’s mine and maybe I can give her more than I thought.

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