Chapter 38 If Only #2
‘This’ being the aftermath of us and not the actual idea of us. Was the aftereffect—the suffering, the shame, the hiding away, the broken heart—worth it when all of our effort led to a nothing result?
“Every moment with you, good or bad, has been worth it, Slim.”
Even in this—our final stolen moment—I agreed with my whole heart. I would never regret my loving Ethan Black.
“Can you tell me what it would have been like?”
His dark eyebrows bunched, and I didn’t stop myself from rubbing my fingers across them both. Touching him in any small way was one of my favorite things to do in the whole world, and after tonight, I’d never be able to do it again.
“Us. Tell me what we would have been like.”
The confusion on his face softened, exchanging out for something equally adoring and impossibly sad. He shifted his body to lay next to me, and I rolled onto my side to stay close to him. We laid there in bed, side by side, hearts clinging together as our hands did the same.
“I… I would have cooked breakfast for you every morning.”
“I love veggie and cheese omelettes.”
Ethan cracked a loving smile against the pillow. “Veggie and cheese omelettes it is.”
My heart swelled to see him smile again, and I snuggled even closer to him on the bed. Ethan’s eyes dropped to our hands as he played with my fingers.
“We would watch old movies and we would laugh a lot. I would have come to every one of your dance recitals, and you would have encouraged me to get back into photography.”
A gentle breath tickled and warmed my fingers as Ethan brought them to his lips. One by one, he kissed their tips and then each one of my knuckles. He covered both of my hands in tattoos of farewell kisses, and by the time he was finished, the tears I’d saved off were burning my eyes again.
Seeing the tears, Ethan went on with the tale of his beautiful fantasy. “We would have supported and respected each other. We would have fought but had these spectacular makeups. You would tell me when I was being too blunt, and I would tell you when you were being too much of a pushover.”
A sorry laugh pushed between my lips, and Ethan’s eyes lightened because of it. Though, behind his smiling eyes, there was a break forming, the cracks splintering his strength the more he went on.
“I would kiss you every chance I got and hold your hand everywhere we went, so that everyone around us knew that we’d done it. We’d found our forever person.”
A tear spilled over and Ethan went to catch it, but it was too late. There were too many tears for him to catch and too much heartache to stop from consuming us whole.
It was too much for even Ethan to stop. The heartbreak had a hold on him too as he clung to me harder than ever before, a hopelessness writhing in his wet eyes.
“I would have loved you and married you and had babies with you,” he said, his voice breaking. “And I would have spent every day making sure you knew how special you were.”
A sob broke out from inside of me, a truly grieving sob for the life I would never get to live and the man I would never get to have.
The rough patch of Ethan’s thumb wiped beneath my eye, and he leaned in close so our noses brushed.
On his breath, I tasted his misery, and through my blurry mess of vision, I saw the broken pieces of his heart tearing up his eyes.
“We would have had an epic love story…” Again, his voice caught so much so that anything he said after that was no louder than a whisper. “And I’m so sorry we’re never going to get to live it.”
“I would have really loved that,” I murmured back.
As Ethan tried to blink away his unshed tears, one escaped down the side of his eye and seeped into the pillow below his head. “Me too.”
What was left standing of my heart screamed and tore itself apart to see Ethan cry because of me. I wanted to comfort him as he had always done for me, and with tonight being our finale, I didn’t see any reason why I couldn’t.
With our bodies already so close, I easily rolled Ethan onto his back and moved myself on top of him.
He stared up at me with so much pain burning around the edges of his eyes, they almost looked black, but the love in them kept them just bright enough to see in the dimly lit room.
I lowered my lips to where his tear had fallen, kissing the salty existence of it.
Then, I did as he did for me and kissed every inch of his face that I could.
His cheeks and the dented smile lines in them, the tip of his nose, his chin—all of it.
Except his mouth.
Ethan’s eyes were waiting for me when I finished painting him a goodbye with my lips. They were intense as anything, and my heart skipped about a dozen beats. He was waiting to see if I would kiss him, leaving it entirely up to me.
The air was still around us. The only sound in the room was our breathing, mine shallow and Ethan’s deep and steady.
His hands held my waist, and I thought about all the times he’d held me as he was now and all the times that he never would be able to again.
I thought about each of our kisses up until now—the soft ones, the passionate ones, the first one.
Our first kiss was lightning—powerful, electric, and dangerous. As my lips hovered above his, I thought about how our last kiss could be the rain.
Chilling, unpredictable, and wrought with gloom.
Our lips melted together, Ethan’s heart kicking mine through his chest as I kissed him.
One of his large hands landed on the side of my face, holding me there as he tasted me and what we tasted like together for the final time.
He anchored me to him as he deepened our kiss, pouring every ounce of his unspoken love for me into it, drowning me like the rain, filling my lungs up with him and only him.
My body tingled like the raindrops were pelting my skin, stinging but glorious. The rain slid down the sides of my face in heavy teardrops, splashing Ethan’s face as we kissed, drenching us both in a downpour too heavy to escape.
I loved him. I loved him so much, and no one would ever kiss me with the same passion ever again. No one could kiss me like Ethan could kiss me, and it made my throat burn that this was the last time I’d ever have this kind of mind-blowing, time-stopping, life-altering kiss.
It was the sweetest and saddest kiss of my entire life.
Our lips parted eventually and we both stayed where we were. “Will you stay with me until I fall asleep?”
I didn’t want him to go. Not yet. I wasn’t ready to let him go.
“Was already planning on it. I’ll need one memory of you falling asleep beside me to get me through a lot of lonely nights.”
And there it was. The final line to our more bitter than sweet love story. I laid down next to him, resting my head on the rise of his chest, just above his heart. I listened to it until I fell asleep.
The last thing I remembered before sleep claimed me was Ethan’s arms wrapped around me and his unique heartbeat, and how I swore it beat to the sound of my name.