Chapter 60
ELIJAH
Sleep finally claims me after what feels like days of restless agony, and in my dreams, she comes back to me. My wife's voice floats through the darkness, sweet and clear as spring water, and it breaks me all over again.
It feels so good, so real that my ribs seem to collapse around my heart, crushing it with hope and grief at once. If I just extend my hand, I could reach her, touch her again, bring her back from wherever she's gone.
The moment she speaks my name, it splits me in two.
"Eli..."
God, I miss that sound. I miss her voice.
It's been a black hole in my world without it. The endless silence where her laughter used to be has been killing me by degrees, one heartbeat at a time. But here, in this dream, I can hear her again. I squeeze my eyes tighter, willing myself deeper into sleep, further from the waking world where she doesn't exist anymore.
"Eli? Wake up..."
"No," I mumble, and feel hot tears sliding down my temples into my hair. "No, please..."
"Eli... why are you crying?"
"Because I miss you..." My voice cracks like I'm six, not twenty-two, not a Division I hockey player who's supposed to be unbreakable. "Every fucking second of every day."
"You have to wake up, babe."
Panic surges through me, a cold tide rising from my stomach to my chest.
No, no, no. I can't wake up. I can't go back to that empty world.
"No... I can't. I don't want to." My fingers clutch at nothing, trying to hold onto sleep, onto her. "Let me just stay here where you are. Please, sweetheart. Please don't make me go back there without you."
I feel it happening anyway—that terrible pull toward consciousness. The dream starting to fray at the edges. My throat constricts and tears flood down my face as I beg her with every ounce of my soul. "Don't go. Sam, please, don't go."
The desperation in my voice would embarrass me anywhere else, with anyone else.
But it's Sam. And I'd tear my own heart out if it meant one more minute with her.
"Sweetheart, please..." My voice breaks into jagged shards.
Then I'm awake and once again I'm in fucking agony.
I slam my palm over my eyes, feeling the hot tears leak between my fingers. My chest heaves with each ragged breath. This grief is a monster living inside me, clawing at my insides, and I have no fucking idea how to kill it or if it will ever stop feeding on what's left of me.
I startle when a warm hand touches my damp face. Fingers that know every plane and angle of my features, that have traced them a thousand times. A familiar scent fills my nostrils.
I'm afraid to move. Afraid to breathe. If this is another hallucination, another trick of my broken mind, I don't think I'll survive it.
With painful slowness, I lift my hand, calibrating each movement as if one wrong twitch could shatter this moment. And then my eyes, burning from tears, meet silver ones—those incredible eyes that have haunted me, the exact shade of moonlight on water.
"Hey," she says, and her voice is so soft, so soothing.
I stare at her, my breath coming in uneven shudders. I want to touch her face, but my hands are frozen. If I reach for her and she disappears like smoke, it'll kill me. The Sam looking at me is pale but with a hint of color returning to her cheeks—not the gray, empty shell I last saw.
"Eli? What's wrong?" Her brows pull together in concern, her head tilted slightly in that way she has when she's worried. Her voice caresses my hollow heart like a balm on a burn.
She looks so real. So alive.
But I've been here before. In the days after she died, I'd see her everywhere. Each time, the relief would flood through me before reality crashed back, leaving me more broken than before.
"Did you have a bad dream?" she asks, her fingers gently wiping away the tears on my cheek.
I swallow hard, my throat working against the knot lodged there.
"No," I finally manage. "I'm having a beautiful dream right now. And I hope to God nobody wakes me up."
"What are you talking about, you big dork?" She chuckles, and the sound vibrates through me like a tuning fork. I've missed that laugh so much it physically hurts to hear it now.
"I know I look like absolute garbage after everything, but jeez, you don't have to pretend I'm some kind of dream girl. Keep buttering me up like this, and I'm really gonna get used to it. You'll be stuck complimenting me forever."
My forehead creases as I carefully study her face.
There's a part of me screaming that this is real, but after losing her, I don't trust my own mind anymore. The hallucinations after her death were so vivid, so convincing—until they weren't. And each time reality reasserted itself, it was like losing her all over again.
Sam's laugh fades as she notices my expression.
Her eyes cloud with worry.
"Eli," she says slowly, "do you actually think you're dreaming right now?"
I give the smallest nod possible. "I want this to be real so bad it's killing me," I rasp, each word scraping my throat.
Sam's gaze softens, her eyebrows pulling together in that bittersweet way that makes her look both happy and sad at once. "I'm real, Eli."
"How can I be sure?"
"Touch me. Then you'll know."
I exhale shakily, overwhelmed by the urge to reach for her, "I'm scared to touch you," I admit, voice low. "Because if this is a dream... if I wake up alone again..." My words falter.
"Oh, Eli," she breathes.
She cups my face with her palm. My eyes flutter closed at the contact, leaning into her touch, silently pleading with the universe for this moment to be real.
"Still think you're dreaming?"
I force my eyes open, my expression crumbling as I nod. I can't trust what I'm seeing, what I'm feeling. I've been broken too many times.
A gentle smile plays across her lips. "What about this?"
She leans forward and presses her lips to mine. The kiss is soft before growing more insistent. Her fingers thread through my hair, tugging slightly, and I make a sound I haven't heard myself make in days. My chest aches with how much I've missed this.
The little sound she makes in the back of her throat when I respond to the kiss—it's too perfect to be a dream.
I deepen the kiss, my hand trembling as it finally, finally reaches up to touch her face. Her skin is warm under my fingertips, and I can feel the slight roughness where it's been dried out by hospital air. Tears spring to my eyes when my thumb brushes her neck and finds her pulse—steady, strong, alive.
I pull back just far enough to look at her, to really see her. My eyes scan every inch of her face, cataloging the reality of it.
And I know. This isn't a dream.
"Sam, you're here..." I choke out, and then I'm holding her, pulling her against me as carefully as I can while sobs rack my body.
"Of course, I'm here."
"You died. In my dream, you died, and I wasn't even there. I was at the championship game, and you were here alone, and—" My chest heaves, stealing my words.
"Shh, I'm here. I'm fine. I'm right here, Eli."
She wraps her arms around me, one hand stroking the back of my head, the other rubbing small circles on my back.
"The transplant worked and I'm getting stronger every day."
"It felt so real," I whisper, my lips brushing the pulse point on her neck, counting each beat to make sure she's really here.
"You haven't had a proper rest in weeks," she says, her fingers still moving soothingly through my hair. "Between taking care of me, worrying about the transplant, and pushing yourself for the Frozen Four... it's all catching up to you." She pulls back, her eyes searching mine. "Your body needed sleep so badly that your brain cooked up the worst possible nightmare."
"I thought I'd lost you forever," I press my forehead against hers, breathing her in.
"Never," she whispers, a soft breath of a laugh in it. "I'm way too stubborn to leave you."
And for the first time in what feels like forever, I believe it.