Extra Chapter
Khalee
(This moment takes place when Grace is talking to Samantha, and Khalee is alone with him in the hospital room.)
* * *
I’m lying beside him, and I can feel time slipping away. It’s like trying to hold water in my hands. No matter how tightly I hold on, it keeps running through my fingers. My chest aches. My mind won’t stop whispering prayers to anything or anyone out there who might be listening.
Please, God. Give him back to me.
We were supposed to have more time.
He’s my miracle. He always has been.
The notebook his parents gave me is now damp between us. My tears have soaked the pages, smearing his handwriting. His songs. His thoughts. His love for me.
God, his words.
How did I ever question them?
How could I ever forget how certain I once was that he was it for me? The love of my life. My soulmate. My everything.
“I need you to come back to me, baby. Please.”
I press my hand to his chest, run my fingers over his arms, his face, his skin.
Anything I can touch. Anything that’s still warm.
“I need you. You’re my everything, Kaze.
You found me in death. Now I need you to find me again in life, too.
Because this world without you in it… It’s not one I want to live in. ”
I rest my forehead against his and breathe him in, shallow and trembling.
“And trust me, baby. I know what that world feels like. For the past five years, all I’ve done is survive.
And maybe some part of me was always waiting, deep down, knowing that our love would find me again.
That you would find me again. So I’m holding on to that now.
Holding on to us. Because I have to believe our love is strong enough to bring you back. ”
My voice cracks as I run my fingers through his hair, gentle and steady. I don’t stop touching him. I can’t. Not even for a moment. My skin needs his, even if he can’t feel it yet.
“We never really talked about the future, you know?” I whisper. “But I want you to know… mine doesn’t make sense without you in it.”
I close my eyes, imagining it now. “I don’t know what you’ll want to do when you wake up.
Maybe you’ll just want peace, and we’ll find that, together.
But me? I want to build a life with you.
I want to wake up beside you every morning, listening to your sleepy voice as you sing while making coffee.
I want you to sing to me. To the cat. To the sky.
And maybe, one day, if you want it too… to our kids. ”
A tear slips down my cheek, but I smile.
“Can you imagine it? A little boy with your eyes, running barefoot through the house, giggling while you chase after him? And you, God, you’d be such a beautiful father.
So patient. So kind. So magic. I dream about it all the time.
About you cradling him against your chest, singing lullabies until he falls asleep.
About me watching you, completely in awe. ”
I take a shaky breath and let the silence stretch between us, filled with the sound of machines and hope.
“But before that,” I continue, my voice softer now, “I want us to live. Really live. Travel the world. Help people. Use everything we’ve survived to make someone else’s path a little easier.
Can you see it? Us in some quiet village by the ocean, or under the stars in a city that doesn’t speak our language, but still feels like home because we’re there together.
Because we’re each other’s home. We always were. ”
I press a kiss to his temple, holding him like he might stir at any second, like love alone could call him back.
“I need you for that future, K. I do. I know you never believed in this kind of thing before —souls, lives beyond this one —but I do. I believe life is a choice. That our souls, wherever they wait between lifetimes, choose to return. To grow. To heal. To love.”
I pause, swallowing the weight of the moment. My voice is barely a whisper.
“We chose this life. This path. Together. Whatever we’re meant to do here… I know it’s meant to be side by side because there’s no ‘me’ without you. Just like there’s no you without me.”
I take his hand gently and press it over my heart, as if I could will my pulse into his chest, as if he could just feel the rhythm of my love, it would call him home, back to me.
“So please, baby. Come back to me. Give me your life, and I promise, I’ll take care of it. I’ll take care of you. I’ll make this second chance mean something. I’ll make it everything. Because you make breathing worth it, you make every single day worth it.”
The tears don’t stop, but I speak through them, steady and sure, because the truth demands to be heard.
“Living is a choice, just like loving is. And I choose you. I choose to live with you, for you. To love you, and to be loved by you. I choose to keep loving you for as long as this life lets me. And if there’s something after this… I’ll love you there, too.”
I kiss his hand and hold it tightly against my chest, grounding myself in the weight of it. In the hope of it.
“I always did, baby. I never stopped. I never could.”