One Special Love (One Night Only 2)

I don’t remember if I saw a big white light I should have walked through or not, but I don’t even remember if I saw God or the Angels. All I’m feeling now is the numbness as I soar through oblivion – of the unknown to an even greater unknown.

Then, something happens... something that changes the emptiness, which breaks the calm, gliding into the oblivion, and turns feeling nothing into feeling everything.

First, there is a pull around me where my waist used to be.

Then, there

is a painful sensation that takes my breath away. This pain isn’t mine, though, it’s different. I know it like I know that I am dead.

And the falling begins...What’s happening?

Has God decided that I don’t deserve this calm, comforting emptiness and pushed me over the edge to Dante’s Inferno?

I keep falling. I keep falling until the sensation starts.

I start to feel my body first.

All those meaningless things gain back their meanings.

I form into my shape, standing outside of a house in the middle of nowhere in the darkness.

What is this?

Then the pulling starts back again, this time into the house. Panic consumes my senses.

Is this a kind of nightmare I find myself in? A nightmare where suffered souls swirl around in pain? A sense of unfinished business occurs to me.

Then I see him…Ashton Kennedy.

He looks rawer than I remembered; his warm brown eyes are framed with dark circles. His full beard covers his beautiful, strong jaw, giving him a rough exterior. I feel myself being pulled closer to him as I lift my hand to his face - I try to touch him, but my touch passes through him like a ghost, and instead of feeling the smooth texture of his beard in my palm I feel nothing.

“So, you read these things, huh, April?” he says, shocking me back to my new reality.

Can he see me?

I try my chance one more time, extending my hand to touch his hair, but the result doesn’t change. My hand goes through his hair.

Disappointed that I can’t touch him, I look at what he is reading. I feel like smiling, he is reading erotica, one from my collection. I sit next to him, still trying to wrap my mind around what is happening here. But before I can come to a conclusion, the tears fall from his eyes, and I understand the source of the pain I’m feeling now.

Ashton Kennedy, the only man I ever loved, is in pain.

And here I am... suffering with his pain, and there’s not a damn thing I can do to ease it, so I suffer along with him.

And here I am...witnessing his suffering and there’s not a damn thing I can do to ease his pain, so I suffer along with him.

CHAPTER TWO

ASHTON

“Why April? Why did you have to leave me so early?” I say aloud to the empty room like she can hear me or better yet, can answer me.

A tear lands on the book in my hand - April’s book and before I can wipe the wetness away my tears start to fall furiously; there’s no way of stopping them. Resting my head back and I close my eyes as a cold shiver runs through me from head to foot even though the fire is still burning.

I opened my eyes and looked around the room for an open window, but there is none. I poke the wood in the fireplace in hope to get some warmth; it’s so cold in here like I have no feeling, as though the warmth has been taken away from me. Shivering again I head to bed, under the blankets, but the coldness follows me to my bed like a long-lost lover.

After a while, the cold starts to give me some kind of comfort, surrounded me in numbness, but not enough to let me sleep. Sleep is a luxury I don’t have anymore. Not since the last time I saw her face, or touched her skin, even heard her laugh. Not since the last time I saw her alive and they say now is the time is to let her go. I don’t want to let her go. So, I accept this new comfort and watch the ceiling hoping maybe sleep will find me this time.

~*~