He let out a long, ragged breath and tipped his head back. His eyes closed, and his chest ached with a despair that was all new to him.
He was beginning to accept the fact that he might never see her again. That she was truly gone.
His grief was the fresh, tearing pain of loss. And it was all the more agonizing because he couldn’t share it. His love had died in reality long before he was born; how could anyone else truly understand his mourning her now?
“Anna,” he whispered, his throat raw. “Oh, God, Anna. I miss you.”
“Dean?”
At first he thought her voice still echoed in his memories, soft and musical and muted. Like the sound of distant wind chimes.
And then she spoke again. “Dean.”
He opened his eyes. She stood on the path in front of him, her white dress gleaming softly in the darkness, her face pale and solemn in the moonlight.
The relief was almost overwhelming. “Anna.” He took a step closer, automatically reaching out to her with his left hand. “Anna—”
She placed her hand in his, that familiar sensation of cool marble felt through a thin, frustrating barrier. Again, he experienced those odd, rippling, strange-but-not-unpleasant tingles from their contact.
“Anna,” he said again, drinking her in with his eyes. “I thought you weren’t coming back.”
Her smile was sad. “We know what you’ve done, Dean,” she murmured, glancing up beside her. “We couldn’t have left without telling you how much it means to us.”
Dean followed her gaze. “Ian is with you?”
She nodded. “You still can’t see him?”
“No.”
She sighed. “I wish you could. He—we both want to thank you. And to tell you—” Her voice broke, but she continued gamely. “To tell you goodbye.”
Dean had wanted the chance to say goodbye. But his pain at hearing the word was so great, he wondered if he could take this, after all.
He wasn’t ready to let her go.
His fingers tightened instinctively around Anna’s hand, as though he would hold her with him through sheer determination. “I—”
He choked, unable to speak around the lump that had formed in his throat.
With her free hand, she brushed her fingertips against his cheek in that tender gesture that had already become so sweetly familiar to him.
“You’re a very special man, Dean Gates,” she whispered, her dark eyes shining in the moonlight. “I can’t imagine that anyone else would have done for us what you’ve done. You risked so much. Few others would have cared enough to have tried. How can we ever thank you?”
“All I did was keep asking questions until someone finally answered them,” he managed to say evenly enough. “Now everyone will know the truth about you.”
“And Ian,” she reminded him.
He glanced at that eerily empty place beside her. He pictured a dark, temperamental young man, and nodded. “Ian, too.”
“I know you’ll do well with our inn, Dean,” Anna murmured. Again, she gave him that sad-edged smile. “I have a feeling about it.”
His chest tightened. “Anna—”
“I think we should go now. It—it will only hurt more if we stay longer.”
He didn’t release her. “Do you feel... different?” he asked awkwardly. “Do you know where you’re going?”
“No,” she whispered, looking away. “But we’ve done what we’ve set out to do. As you said, everyone will know the truth about us. We—we don’t belong here. It’s your home now.”