Page 85 of Whispers of Helena
We keep moving, riding the high, stretching it out as long as possible.
Then I see it.
Tears gather at the corners of her eyes, not from sadness, but from our bond. Something that reaches back to every morning we woke up tangled in each other’s arms. Every whispered confession, every time I kissed her just because I could.
The sound of our wedding vows ring in my head. The pride and love I felt watching her body change as our son grew inside her. The way she looked fresh out of the shower. The sound ofher soft breaths as she slept. The way she would know my thoughts before I spoke.
The years of our love, how we found our way to each other in life and now again in death, fall over me.
She smiles, lips curving, eyes soft, and I am undone.
I am hers. I have always been hers.
The realization crashes over me, violent and merciless, like a river that’s broken free from a dam. It’s not new, not some revelation that crept up on me in the dark. No, it’s always been there, buried under layers of anger, regret, and the years I spent convincing myself I didn’t need her. That I could live without her. That I could forget.
But I never did.
Every moment apart was a slow, steady ache in my chest. Every day without her was hollow, every night haunted by the memory of her touch, her voice, her goddamn fire that burned through me like she was made to live beneath my skin.
Caroline.
And right now, she’s looking at me like she knows.
Like she feels it, too.
Her fingers brush against the back of my neck, her nails dragging just enough to send a shiver down my spine. I swallow hard, my hands tightening on her hips as I hold her against me. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know if Icansay anything.
She tilts her head, breath hitching, and I see it all in her eyes. The past, the present, the war between us that’s never been about hate. It’s always been this. This need, this fire, this love that remained even in our time apart.
She doesn’t speak, doesn’t ask for promises or pretty words. She just stays there, pressed against me, waiting.
And that’s when I know.
I was a fool to think I could ever let her go.
Reunion
Helena
Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it: if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned.
Song of Solomon 8:7
My fingers tracethe heated skin of his neck. He’s still inside me, our bodies still locked together, but it’s more than that. He’s here. Fully, completely.
He is undone.
His chest rises and falls in uneven breaths, his skin flushed, his heart laid bare. His eyes—God, his eyes. I have seen the gates of heaven, have been in the presence of angels, but nothing,nothingcompares to the blue that stares back at me now. Raw. Open. Stripped of the pride and grief that’s kept him from me.
I cup his face, my thumbs grazing the stubble on his jaw. “You remember.” My voice is barely above a whisper, but it carries the totality of the years between us. The longing. The heartbreak. The hope.
His fingers tighten on my hips, as if he’s afraid I’ll slip away. “Iremember.” The words are quiet, but they hit me like a thunderclap.
My throat tightens. “No more running?”
He presses his hips forward, not to claim, not to take, but to ground us both. His hands frame my face, rough and calloused, yet impossibly gentle as they hold me there, as if he’s memorizing the shape of me beneath his palms.
His voice breaks. “You and me, forever.”
