Hereafter (Shadowlands 2)

Tristan looked down at my hand. I felt the cold weight of the coin cupped inside my palm. I cleared my throat, and my eyes welled up.

“We’re here to say good-bye,” I said.

Tristan dipped his head and took a step back on the sandy, rocky road, giving us space.

Aaron looked at me quizzically. “Are you going somewhere?”

“No,” I said sadly. “You are.”

I handed him the coin, and he held it up between his thumb and forefinger, studying it. “Where am I going?”

“Someplace amazing,” I told him, my heart aching like crazy. “Someplace where you’ll be happy and…at peace.”

That was how I imagined the Light would be. The way I hoped it would be.

Aaron smiled. “That sounds fairly awesome.”

I grinned, struggling to hold back the tears, and put my hand on his back, turning him toward the bridge. “All you have to do is hold on to that and walk across the bridge,” I told him. “You’ll be there before you know it.”

Aaron took one step, then looked back at me. “I wish you could come.”

“Me, too.” I reached out and hugged him as tightly as I could, trying to solidify the feeling of him, his clean scent, in my memory. “It’s been so nice knowing you,” I whispered.

“You, too,” he told me. “Thanks for everything. I mean it, Rory. You’ve been a really good friend.”

I looked over at Tristan. It was almost as if Aaron knew where he was going. Maybe some small part of him did.

“Good-bye,” Aaron said to Tristan rather formally.

Tristan lifted a hand in a wave, and Aaron strode into the fog surrounding the bridge. The second he was gone, I dropped my face into my hands and cried, feeling guilty and selfish for it. Aaron was going to be fine. He was going to the Light. It was me I was crying for.

Suddenly I felt Tristan’s warm hand slide up my back and clasp my shoulder. “Rory,” he said, his voice full of anguish and grief and comfort and hope.

I turned toward him, knowing my face was covered in tears, knowing my nose was swollen and my eyes were red and my lips were dry and puffy. Knowing and not caring.

Tristan reached up and ran his thumb over my cheek, tilting my face so I had to look him in the eye.

“Rory,” he said again.

“I’m sorry,” I blubbered. “I just…I didn’t want…I didn’t want him to go.”

“I know,” he said, drying one cheek with the pad of his thumb. “I know.”

He took in a sharp breath, and then before I could realize what was happening, he kissed me. He kissed me so hard that I staggered backward until he tightened his grip on me to hold me up. I slid my hands up his broad back and tangled my fingers up in the soft, thick hair at the nape of his neck. Tristan kissed me like a guy who’d never kissed anyone before. Like a person who was so starved to be kissed he’d never stop. Not that I ever wanted him to. It didn’t even matter that my skin was smeared with tears. I’d never experienced a kiss so perfect. I’d never experienced anything so perfect.

When he finally pulled away, his hands gripped the back of my T-shirt and we were standing so close I couldn’t tell whose legs were whose. We both gasped for breath, our exhalations mingling between us.

“I thought you said—”

“Forget what I said,” he interjected. “I’m just sick of it.”

“Sick of what?” I asked, my brow creasing.

“Sick of trying to keep away from you,” Tristan said with a sigh. He held the back of my neck with one hand. “I’ve only been doing it for ten days, and it feels like an eternity.”

He kissed me again, and I smiled beneath his lips. He’d been counting the days, struggling all along to keep from wanting me, and now he was breaking the rules for me—breaking his own rules. Everything felt lighter suddenly. It was as if some chokehold on my heart had loosened and now it could really breathe.

Tristan broke off the kiss and wrapped his arms around me. For a long time we just stood there, folded against each other. My eyelashes were still wet, my heart brimming.