Chapter 30
Lanston
Ophelia’s thighsare clamped tightly around my hips and her arms are practically keeping air from entering my lungs. The smile on my face is painful at this point, but I can’t seem to let my lips fall.
After the first few hours, she loosens her vice grip on me and starts to relax more. Her head turns to look as we pass distant castles on the Irish countryside. We find a beach on the west coast as we’re traveling north from Galway: Keem Beach on Achill Island.
It’s empty by the time we pull up. On a cold, dreary day such as this, I’m unsurprised.
The stars are already peeking out from the fading sunset, and we only have our two bags, a blanket, and a wine bottle Ophelia snagged from the pub.
“This is the smallest beach I’ve ever seen,” she says with a laugh. Her black puffer jacket is zipped up to her chin—long purple waves of hair spill over her shoulders.
“Ireland is known for its cliffs, not its beaches.” I chuckle, looking up at the hills on each side of the coast. Sheep and rocks are our only neighbors, along with one lone, abandoned building at the top of the slope.
“Yeah, but still, are you sure this is your bucket list beach?”
I lift my shoulders and let them fall. “As long as I’m experiencing it with you, that’s all that really matters to me.” Her face lights up and her cheeks redden. Then a thought flickers across her gaze and she sullens. I raise a brow but don’t ask what’s the matter. A silence stretches between us before she bundles up the blanket in her arms.
“I’ll get the bed set up,” she says as cheerfully as she can and walks down the beach before I can respond. Is she upset with the location? Or maybe because our list is getting shorter… I want to add a thousand things to the bucket list, never wishing for our time together to end.
She pulls away emotionally when I try to let her know how I feel about her. Shit. Jericho makes it sound so easy.
Last night, he drunkenly told me that I need to take the leap like I did with Wynn and just tell her how I feel. But she’s so guarded. I don’t want to get hurt again, even if it’s my last chance at love.
A stream of light brightens across the sky and draws my attention. Ophelia makes a small gasping sound as she notices it too.
“A shooting star,” we say simultaneously.
The grin returns to my lips and Ophelia waves me over to the blanket frantically. “Hurry!” she shouts. I trot down the wet sand and lower to my knees beside her.
“Why the hurrying?” I ask with a smirk.
She gets close to me, tucking herself beneath my arm and staring up at the falling star. “I don’t want to miss this moment. It’s once in a lifetime.” Her heart is beating so fast I can feel it where my fingers trace her ribs.
“What will you wish for?” My voice is soft, and though I want to watch the falling star, I find her awe with it much more appealing.
Her eyes flash up to mine. We stay like this for a lovely moment, forgetting the stars and the wishes we’d only just been talking about.
She brushes her finger across my lower lip. “For another life, but this time, you’d be there.”
My smile grows. “Yeah? And what would we do in this new life?” She leans forward and rests her arms on her knees. Her head tilts to the side as she stares at me.
“We would laugh… as much as we do now. You’d bring me coffee and I’d sing and dance for you. You’re the artist, drawing and painting pictures of me and other somber things. You’d be popular but not famous. It was never what you wanted, you see.” Her words are soft-spoken and gentle—a compliment. The vision of the life she speaks out pieces together in my mind. A beautiful life. And quiet. The two of us would grow old, but our souls would remain the same.
“What of you in this life, my rose?” I ask, craving more of her imagination.
“I would dance in only the most renowned theaters amidst the wisest audience. Only for them and only for you.” Ophelia’s eyes glimmer with the light of the shooting star. “To violins and cellos of the most somber songs.”
Only for me.
“I wish for that too.” My voice is low. Melancholic.
But another part of me is content, overwhelmed with the feeling that we were meant to meet this way.
“Can I tell you something?”
I blink down at her and smile to encourage her.
She swallows. “Your light is contagious. Bright. I could find you in the depths of the underworld. Through mist and darkness. Through it all.”
The blood in my veins warms as I grin. “That bright, huh?” She winces with vulnerability. I take a shallow breath, leaning close and pressing my forehead to hers as I whisper, “I would wait for you if it meant walking the cold castle walls of a cathedral until I lost my own identity. Until all I knew was you.” I press my lips to hers.
I kiss her like she’s the only person in the entire world. The only soul that walks on the same soil as I do.
A broken soul. A wandering spirit. A sad, lost thing. Now found.
Ophelia lets her head relax, kissing me as fervently as I do her. As if each stroke of our tongues and lips could be the last. She sighs with desire, bringing her hand down my chest.
We go down together. The blanket and sand swallow us whole as our worlds collide.
“Ophelia,” I say her name like one would whisper prayers to a goddess.
She straddles me, long hair outlining her lithe features. Her eyes are hooded beneath dark lashes, mouth parting to say something in return before she freezes. Ophelia snaps her eyes up to look at something toward the entrance of the beach. Horror befalls her expression and I watch her entire body tense with fear.
Terror slips inside me, stirring my blood. I twist to look where she does and find darkness moving down the lip of the parking lot toward us.
No. How did they already find us?
“Ophelia, get to the ocean!” I hastily reach for her wrist, but she looks up at me with an anguished frown. I know then that she’s planning on doing something foolish. “Ophelia!”
She gives me a caressing look. One that someone only does if they’re memorizing the features of your face or the way you would gaze at them with adoration one last time.
“I love you, my darling.”
Her words are sorrowful—an unspoken goodbye.
Then she darts across the beach so fast that I don’t have even a moment to think before the dark cloud of whispering mist is chasing after her. What looks like an arm shrouded in shadows juts out and strikes me. It hits me so hard that the world falls around me like petals and rain.
Slowly, terribly—my eyes close and everything stops.
My rose. Please, please, don’t go.
Not without me.