Chapter 51
Chapter Fifty-One
ELIZABETH
Dreams
My senses feel sluggish, not quite ready to awaken from the deep sleep I was in.
There’s a tickle against my cheek, and I slowly blink open my eyes.
Everything is blurry through the grit crusting my eyelashes.
Wiping it away using the heels of my palms, my vision clears, only to see darkness.
Struggling to sit up, I wince when the crick in my neck makes itself known. I must’ve nodded off at some point.
“Jayson,” I say, but he’s not there beside me on the couch.
The blanket he covered me with falls off my shoulders when I stretch my arms high and yawn. I wish he would’ve woken me up. The sectional isn’t the most comfortable place to fall asleep. My sore neck agrees.
I shiver when the night-chilled air kisses the exposed skin of my shoulders and immediately wrap the blanket around me again. He must’ve also turned off the fireplace before heading in.
Unfolding my legs, my muscles groan when I stand up. I wonder what time it is. Middle of the night, probably.
Shuffling on tired feet back inside the house, I pause and look out over the courtyard when I notice the twinkling of dozens of fireflies. No, not fireflies. Fairy lights. Like the ones Jayson put in our tree. When did he do that?
The paver stones are still wet from the rain, the damp tiles slick beneath my bare feet as I venture out into the courtyard.
The clouds have finally dissipated, leaving behind a clear night sky sprinkled with stars that are more pronounced under a new moon.
The overall ambience created feels like I’m stepping into a fairy tale.
“Elizabeth.”
I come to a dead stop, my pulse hammering wildly when a shadowy figure materializes in front of me. Everything tilts, and for a moment, I can’t breathe.
I blink once, twice, my mind trying to catch up to my heart when golden-brown eyes stare back at me, the same shade of burnished copper that would always look at me with so much love, like I was the most precious thing in his world.
The aching hollows of my heart that only recently learned how to stop breaking gape wide open.
The air catches in my throat, half-sob, half-laughter, and my knees nearly give out at the sight of his devastatingly handsome face. “Ryder?”
He’s wearing his favorite Randy’s Custom Auto black tee, the one I would bury my face into every night after the funeral and soak with my tears.
The jeans he has on hang low on his hips and are faded and frayed at the knees.
My eyes are ravenous for the sight of him, tracking the dark stubble of his jaw, the unruly sweep of his brown-black hair, and his smile—God, that smile.
The one he reserved only for me. The kind that made me feel like the center of every star in the sky.
“There’s my girl,” he says in that deep timbre, and hearing it destroys me in the best way possible.
He steps forward into the light, and I stagger backward. Not from fear but from the unbearable surge of everything I’m feeling.
“Where have you been?” I ask, the words tumbling out on a choked gasp filled with so much longing. I used to see him every night, but it’s been weeks.
When his fingers brush my cheek, they’re warm. Solid. Real. His hand trails down my neck to my heart. “I’m always here, sweetheart.”
I expect him to vanish like he always does, a cruel trick of the dreams that maliciously taunt me, where he fades away just as I’m reaching for him.
“I’ve missed you so much.”
I don’t care if this is madness, or heaven, or some illusion that my mind is offering me. Ryder is here .
I crumple into him and bury deep, my tears soaking into his chest. He smells like sandalwood and citrus, and my hands fist the back of his shirt, terrified he’ll disappear if I let go.
“I miss you, too, my sweet Elizabeth.” His arms hold me, strong and safe and exactly how I remember.
We stand there, wrapped in each other, in time, in something beyond explanation. It’s too vivid to be a dream. Too perfect to be anything else.
“I’m mad at you,” I mumble into his shirt.
His chest vibrates with his chuckle. “I know, baby,” he says, caressing my hair. “Never heard you throw so many fuck yous around at one time.”
I lean back in his arms and outline every detail of his face with trembling fingers because I can’t stop touching him. “Why?”
My one-word question is filled with so many whys. Why did he keep secrets from me? Why did he take it on himself to decide what was best for me?
“Because I love you.” He lifts my necklace from under the open vee of the shirt, his masculine fingers that knew how to touch me in every way tenderly stroking the rings he gave to me. “Because it was time, and you needed a push.”
“That wasn’t your choice to make.”
Ryder’s amber gaze lifts to mine. “I know it might not make sense, but even when you thought you had none, it has always been your choice, sweetheart.”
My mouth turns down in a moue because I can’t grasp his logic. “No, that doesn’t make sense at all.”
“Your heart understands, baby.”
His face flickers in and out, like the flame of a candle when it gets to the end of its wick. I’m about to wake up. I’m not ready. My hands cling to him as I will myself to stay asleep for just a little while longer.
“Don’t go. Please stay. Just a little longer.”
Ryder cradles my face, and an explosion of love and longing sets the world on fire when his lips take mine, our kiss hungry and fueled by desperation because our time together is about to end.
“We can’t stay long,” he says and glances over his shoulder.
We? I peer around him to see who he’s looking at, and profound disconcertment overtakes me. Why is Charlotte here? She shouldn’t be here.
One by one, the gears of awareness start turning, and my brow dips in a frown when I look up at Ryder.
He smiles. Nods.
It’s not possible.
My eyes find the girl again, and the young woman smiles, like she knows me.
Like she has always known me. No, not a girl.
A beautiful young woman. Her long blonde hair, the same shade as mine, is pulled into a loose braid over one shoulder.
But that’s not all. The heart shape of her face, the slant of her smile, and the dimple in her cheek.
Recognition sends me reeling as her soft gray eyes gaze back at me with heartbreaking tenderness. Her father’s eyes.
“Hi, Mama.”
“I always imagined our daughter would have your hair and green eyes,” Jayson whispers.
I close my eyes and picture her. There’s a memory there, and I grab it, forcing it forward. I’m opening a silver star. The same as the ones from my dreams. The same as the ones he gave me. Inside is written: “A daughter who has your eyes and your smile.”
Jayson and I would imagine what Elizabeth Ann would look like, but nothing could have prepared me for this moment, and I burst into ugly tears, overwhelmed at seeing my daughter for the first time.
I stagger forward on shaky legs, the distance between us infinite yet instant all at once.
“Oh my god.” I have her in my arms before I can take my next breath.
It’s like holding heaven and goodness and sunshine if they were tangible things.
I clutch Elizabeth Ann to me, my tears releasing years of sorrow, of love never given, of lullabies never sung.
“You are so beautiful,” I rasp into her hair.
She smells like jasmine. Like me. “I love you so much, my sweet girl.”
Elizabeth Ann nuzzles her cheek against mine, her skin softer than feather down. “I love you, too, Mama.”
I touch her face, memorizing every detail—the Cupid’s bow of her mouth, the smattering of freckles across her nose—seven just like Jayson—the delicate arch of her eyebrows.
“I’m so sorry I couldn’t protect you,” I cry, my heart feeling like it might splinter apart from the pain of knowing I failed her.
“It wasn’t your fault, Mama.”
Her instant forgiveness both annihilates and heals me. “I never got to be your mother.”
Elizabeth Ann cups my tear-ravaged face and kisses me lightly on each cheek. “You have always been my mother. I feel your love every day. I hear your voice and the stories you read to me, the songs you sing. You are always with me.”
Ryder presses to my back, his arms coming around me. I grab hold of his bicep, completing the connection. Me, her, him.
“Isn’t she beautiful?” I’m not able to tear my eyes from the daughter I have loved with all my heart but never got a chance to love in this life. The life that Peter took from us.
“The best parts of you and Jay,” he says, his lips in my hair.
The fairy lights begin to dim, allowing the darkness to creep back in.
“It’s time,” Ryder says, and Elizabeth Ann solemnly nods.
“What? No! Not yet. Just a little while longer,” I plead, refusing to let go, but they slip away from me like smoke.
“I love you, Mama.”
“Always and forever,” Ryder says.
“No! I want more time! Please don’t go!”
Their forms shimmer against the darkness as more shadows take shape around them. Mom. Dad. Hailey. Randy. They’re all here. Every face I have loved. Every precious soul I’ve had to bury.
Grief, sharp and suffocating, geysers out of me in a torrent of heartbreak and tears. “I’m not ready to let go.”
Hailey’s gentle smile caresses my battered heart. “You don’t have to let go to move forward, Lizzie, because we will always be with you, like footprints in the sand.”
Elizabeth Ann turns, and she reaches her hand out, but there’s nothing there, just another shadow not fully formed. “We’ll take care of him, Mama. And when you’re ready, we’ll be right here, waiting for you,” she says.
The familiar words crash into me like lightning.
“I’ll wait until you’re ready. However long it takes. A year or an eternity. I’ll always be standing right there, waiting for you.”
No. No.
Please, no.
Not even God himself would be that cruel.
“ No! ” I scream to the heavens. “ No! ” I grip my head and fall to my knees. “ No! ” I scream so loud and so long that my voice shatters from the pain that erupts out of me.
Like a knife penetrating deep, then violently twisting, I fly awake on a gasp, clutching my chest as my heart tries to rip itself from my body.
I swipe at the tears I cried in my sleep and collapse back onto the couch cushions. Holy shit, that was…gut-wrenching. I haven’t had a dream like that in weeks. It felt so real.
I take a minute to get my bearings. It’s still dark, no glimmer of sunlight teasing the horizon. The fire is still going, but its radiating warmth doesn’t help dispel the cold of the emotional tumult my mind just experienced.
I instinctively search for my phone—wanting to call Fallon, needing to hear his voice, needing to tell him that I love him—before remembering that I left it on the kitchen counter.
I turn my head. Jayson is sound asleep. I tap his shoulder to wake him up.
“I just had the most surreal dream. I saw Elizabeth Ann.” I blow out a breath, wanting to recall some parts of the dream but not the others.
“She had your eyes and smile and that dimple on your left cheek.” I try to process everything.
The joy of seeing her and Ryder and my family.
Holding Elizabeth Ann for the first time.
The anguish of losing them again when they started to fade.
“I’m not going to be able to fall back asleep.
Want some coffee?” I sit up and nudge his leg.
He doesn’t move. Doesn’t stir.
“Jayson?” I shake him more aggressively.
No response.
I grip his shoulders and shake harder. “Jayson, wake up.”
Nothing.
His head lolls to the side when I push him back against the couch. I smack his cheeks. “Stop it. You’re scaring me,” I tell him, my voice rising in panic.
Nothing.
“Jayson!”
He’s too still. Too quiet.
“Jayson, please—” I whimper.
My hand violently trembles as I search for a pulse at the side of his neck.
No, no, no, no, no .
I press my ear to his chest. There’s no rise and fall. No breath…
…no heartbeat.
“You can’t have him!” I shout to God. To Ryder. To Elizabeth Ann. “Damn you, you can’t have him! ”
I slide to the floor and throw myself over Jayson, administering CPR with desperate compressions to his chest. Hot tears pour down my cheeks and wick into his shirt.
I won’t. I can’t. Not yet.
“Don’t you fucking leave me,” I shout at him as my palms slam into his chest with force.
He was fine. He was here with me. We were eating pizza and talking. Laughing. He was fine!
I feel for a pulse. Put my ear to his mouth.
No, no, no, no, no .
“You promised me!” I count each compression like they’re prayers, my efforts relentless even when my arms start to burn from exhaustion—even when I know. “All our next times. You promised.”
Sobs jolt my body between gasps for air as I try to breathe life into him.
“Please, please don’t leave me.” I curl over him, clutching him with both fists like I can anchor him to this world through sheer will.
“Jayson!” My scream tears from somewhere deep inside me, raw and animalistic, as if pain could be manifested in sound.
“We just found each other again. You promised!”
I can’t lose someone else I love. I can’t. It’s not fair. I don’t understand.
Clack.
I look down when Jayson’s phone slides out from his pocket and lands face down on the floor with a thud.
I pick it up.
My fingers fumble uselessly trying to unlock the screen. I swipe, dial, and press it to my ear.
“9-1-1, what’s your emergency?”
“Please help. He’s not breathing,” I sob into the phone. “He was fine. He—he fell asleep. We fell asleep, and—and now—he won’t wake up. Send help.”
I don’t hear what the dispatcher asks next. The phone slips from my hand.
Jayson’s heavy body is dead weight when I cradle him in my arms. “Please don’t leave me.” I press kisses to his pale face and blue lips as I beg him over and over to stay.
But he doesn’t.
He won’t.
Because he’s gone.
He’s gone.
My best friend. The boy who owns all my firsts. The first boy I ever loved. My silver-eyed prince.
And the world breaks around me.
Just as I break with it.