After Forever (13 page)

“But what if it is, like,
twenty
years, Cade? It’s been
one
year, and we’re both going crazy. This isn’t a sustainable life. Not for me, not for you. For you, most of all.”

“What do you mean, me most of all?”

I stood up, tossed his boots by the door, and went into the kitchen. I opened the freezer, found the bottle of Bombay Sapphire I’d been saving, poured two fingers each into glasses with ice. And then realized I didn’t have anything to mix it with except orange juice. My roommate, however, had a bizarre obsession with Capri Sun. She bought two or three boxes every week, and there was a brand-new box in the fridge. I took out two pouches, cut the tops off, and poured the strawberry-kiwi flavored liquid into the ice and gin. I sat down beside Cade, handing him one of the glasses.

“What is this?”

I shrugged. “Gin and Capri Sun. It’s all I had.”

He sipped at it. “Surprisingly good.”

I laughed. “Gin goes well with just about everything. Especially when it’s Sapphire.”

“Are you a gin snob?” he teased.

“Absolutely,” I said, grinning over my glass. “Wine, pour me a glass of whatever. Beer? Don’t care, I’ll drink anything. Whiskey? Yuck. But for whatever reason, the only gin I like is Sapphire. Call me crazy.”

“Crazy.” We sipped in silence for a few moments. And then Cade leveled a look at me that told me he hadn’t forgotten my comment. “What did you mean, me most of all?”

I blew out a long breath. “Just that…you’re stuck. You can’t go forward. With life. With…love.”

“So I’m supposed to pull the plug on her so I can be with someone else? There
is
no one else. She knows everything about me. Knows what I’ve been through. I could never…I couldn’t explain my life to anyone else.”

“So you’re supposed to live on the edge of nothing indefinitely?” I rubbed at the condensation on my glass. “It’s no way to live. You said it yourself.” We were both empty already, so I mixed us each a second one.
 

“But what’s the answer? How can I just…give up on her? I can’t. Not when there are literally thousands of stories of people coming out of comas, or persistent vegetative states, or whatever.” He hung his head, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. “It’s all so impossible.”

I knew what he meant all too well. Daily life without her was impossible. She’d been the constant in my life. We’d made up a secret language as little girls, and had even used it as teenagers a few times, in a public situation. It had been years since we’d used it together, though. What I felt in Ever’s absence was beyond missing. It was something worse than merely missing her.

I moved closer to him, rested my head on his shoulder. “That’s all I’m saying. And as much as he came across like a callous asshole, I think that’s all Dr. Murphy was saying. It’s impossible, and we have to at least
consider
, as horrible as it seems, all the angles.”

“I can’t examine
all the angles
!” Cade said, his voice quiet but intense. “I love her. I’ll always love her. How can I just…let her go?” He clenched his fists, pressed them into his eye sockets. The next words came out in a hiss. “And what does it say about me that I
have
considered that? Every day that thought passes through my head. What would I do without her? Would it…
fuck
…would it be easier if she was…was gone? How
horrible
does that make me?” He knuckled his forehead so hard, so violently, that I grabbed his wrists and pulled them away.
 

 
“It doesn’t make you horrible, Cade. It makes you human.” I didn’t let go of his wrists. My cheek rested on his shoulder. “It’s okay to think about yourself. You have to give yourself permission to be okay.”

He turned his head, shifted his torso toward mine, and suddenly we were face to face. The scant inches between us, between our faces, crackled, thick with some tension I couldn’t bear to name. I wasn’t breathing, and neither was he. Our eyes locked, too close. I smelled the gin on his breath.
 

And then he was up, rocketing to his feet, crossing the room and slamming his fists into the refrigerator door. “I don’t know
how
.” He slammed his drink, the ice clinking, falling against his mouth as he drank, clinking again as he set it down on the counter with a groan. “The only thing I know for sure is that I’m…lost. And I don’t know how to find myself.”

I stood up, set my glass beside his. Stood behind him. “You’re not lost, Cade. You’re hurting. You’re…you’re here. With me. For whatever that’s worth.”

He turned in place, and suddenly I was standing looking up into his amber eyes, his conflicted, angry, hurting eyes. “But what does that mean?”

“Does it have to mean anything? Sometimes, maybe…sometimes there’s no right or wrong. Sometimes there’s just…surviving.”

“Surviving?” He was close, so close to me. Tall, huge. Strong. But…somehow fragile, and in need of someone to…shelter him.
 

“Surviving.” I couldn’t get a full breath. His gaze on mine was unwavering, and I felt dizzy, felt the gin rushing through me.

“I survive by keeping it all…in. Down. By holding on so tight. I’m holding on, just…holding on. With all my strength. And I’m running out of strength. But…what happens when I can’t hold on? When I let go?”

We both stood on the edge of something. I sensed it, and so did he. I felt something building, something that had been burning, an ember glowing deep down, setting slow hot fire that spread, spread, and it was consuming me. Consuming him. I’d been denying the fire, denying its heat, denying its voracious teeth sunk into me.

There was no space between us now. We were flush, but still not touching. Touch was a match lit in a room full of explosives. I didn’t dare move for fear of striking that match.
 

“Eden,” he whispered. I only blinked in response, looked up at him. “What is this?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’m holding on for dear life, Eden. What happens if I let go?” He wasn’t talking merely about hope, about belief, or about survival, I somehow knew. He was talking about the ember burning between us. It was just a single spark, a tiny point of light in a world of darkness.
 

But a spark held so much potential. A spark contained all the heat and violence of a wildfire.
 

I don’t know which one of us moved first, but it was sudden, aggressive.

It was a violent, gin-laced kiss, soaked in desperation.

the maelstrom

Caden

There are moments in life when you know, irrevocably, that you’ve given in, come undone. That you’ve slipped, lost your balance, and fallen over a cliff’s edge, that there’s no climbing back up, there’s no slowing the fall. You never forget those moments. They get burned into the fabric of your soul, imprinted on you, tattooed on your consciousness.

Kissing Eden Eliot was that moment in my life. It was giving in.
 

It was only lips on lips at first. Surprise, tasting like gin. Heat, tasting like strawberry-kiwi. And then her fingers curled into the sleeve of my flannel button-down, clawing at my arm. Gripping me for dear life, her fingers like daggers in my skin. My hands, once at my sides, now became tangled in her shirt, brushing flesh. Dug into her back, her waist.
 

The kiss was push and pull, give and take. Pressure mounted in the kiss, heat spiraling to a thousand degrees Celsius within a heartbeat, aggression in the bruising crush of our mouths. Her hand rose, touched my cheek, trembling with furious energy. Slid over my ear, into my hair, tangled and gripped, clawed.
 

Breath exchanged, a single gasping breath, and then our mouths met like glaciers colliding, and my fingers curled like talons into the soft, supple flesh of her waist beneath her sweater and pulled her against me, jerked her flush against my waist, so every curve of her body pressed into the hard lines and angles of mine.
 

We kissed like devouring.

Heat and need and gin warred for dominance in my skull, but a single mote of reason flashed into sudden brilliance, and I pushed her away, unapologetically violent. She stumbled backward, cheeks flushed, panting, hand over her swollen lips, eyes panicked, needy, raging with volcanic heat, searching me.

“Cade…
fuck
…what just happened?” she gasped, her voice grating, scraping in her raw throat.

I shook my head, taking a tremulous step away from the counter. Away from the counter, meaning…toward her. Wrong direction. I slid along the counter’s edge, shuffling away, as if trying to escape the hungry gaze of a predator stalking me.
 

But it was just Eden, watching me.
 

I turned away from her, unable to tolerate the expression in her eyes. The fiery blaze of need, matching the animal fury pounding within me. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see. All I could feel was the scintillating imprint where her hand had touched me, as if I was scarred by the softness of her hands. I felt her lips on mine. I fought the shivering, fought the pulsing need, fought the sweetness of the way she’d tasted.

But I felt her behind me, felt her presence. “Cade?” Her voice broke on the single syllable.

I shook my head, denying even the sound of her voice, but I was on fire, I was lost in the grip of a drug. Desperation is a chemical, a narcotic. I was desperate for anything, for any emotion other than what I’d been living with for the last year.
 

I couldn’t help but turn around, shying away from her intoxicating proximity, the guilt of her very scent in my nostrils, the knowledge of her on my skin, seeping into my pores. Her gaze locked on mine, green like barium-fed flames. I resisted. Fought against it. Against her. Against needing this,
needing
her. It was primal need, animal hunger. I stared at her, gripping the counter edge in my hands until I heard the laminate creak and crack, my fingers aching from the pressure.
 

She lunged at me, pouncing like a lion, both hands in my hair at the back of my head pulling me, jerking me into the kiss, and I did not go willingly. I kissed her back with anger. Tangled my fingers in her hair, grabbing a handful of blonde locks and tugging her head back, kissing her off-balance, holding her by her waist, one arm around her, keeping her up.

She went limp in my arms, and I tasted blood from the force of the kiss.
 

I righted her, let her go, broke the kiss with a curse. “Eden, we—we
can’t
!”

She backed away from me, turned to the freezer and poured way too much gin into each glass, mixing it with the remnants of the ice and gin and juice. She swallowed it pure, and I took mine, followed suit.
 

She paused in drinking, rested her wrist against her mouth, the glass against her cheek and temple, staring at me sidelong. “We can’t…but I can’t
not
.” She slammed the rest. Poured more.
 

I drank, gin burning and mixing with the flames inside me, fueling the fire. The gin was supposed to help me make sense of it all, but it wasn’t. It was only swallowing that mote of reason. And I knew, understood about myself that I was drinking the gin to drown that atom of logic. It was the last shred of my fingernail upon the cliff face, holding me aloft with such excruciating pain, such agony. And giving in, it would be pain, further agony, new torment, but I couldn’t take the horror anymore, the longing for something I’d never have, the longing for Ever when I’d never have her again.
 

I’d lost all hope. When the doctor had spoken of “considering all options,” I’d lost hope. When I even considered entertaining other options, the one truth binding me to the shredded notion of hope evaporated.
 

And when I lost hope, I lost the will to hold everything in. To hold back. Hope was all I had, and with it gone, I was lost. So lost. I’d been lost my whole life, and Ever had been my one true north. With her gone, taken from me, I had no compass. All I had was Eden, there in front of me.
 

Watching me, needing me the way I needed her. I didn’t want to need her, but I did.
 

I had no north, no direction, no hope. All I had left was this, giving in to this.
 

“I’m lost…” I whispered.

“Me, too.” She set her glass down, carefully, gingerly, as if wary of startling a wild animal. I was that animal, caged and tensed, poised to spring. “I’m lost. You’re lost. But if we have to be lost, can’t we…can’t we at least be lost together?”

She was begging me to make it okay. I couldn’t give that to her. I had nothing to give. I could only take, and even that was impossible. Everything was impossible.
 

I couldn’t look away from her, from the way the thin blue cashmere of her sweater clung to her frame, clung to her curves, to her breasts that swelled with each breath. I couldn’t not see the bell of her hips and the muscle of her thighs beneath the khaki of her slacks. I knew the sight of her flesh beneath her clothes, and I knew the taste of her lips and I knew that I needed
something,
and she was there, all that was there, the only thing in my life that was sure, a one true thing in a hurricane world. The only breath I could catch in the battering pound of waves all around.
 

 
She stood before me, and we both gasped for breath, panting beneath the weight of resistance. I shook, every muscle trembling with the force of denial. My hands clawed, my skull throbbed, my stomach churned, my heart pounded. I was holding back, staring down at her, my chest burning as I tried to deny the gravity of need, its pull upon me.

“I can’t hold on any longer,” I whispered. “I’m drowning.”

She took the glass from me, empty now, although I had no memory of finishing the gin. “I’m sick of fighting it. I can’t anymore.”

“Me, neither.” I meant to say something else, I didn’t know what, but all that emerged was a choked, strained, sob.
 

And then I was falling, letting go, letting go. Knowing I was drowning now and that I’d never see light again, that I was descending into some dark place from which I’d never return.