Between the Lives - By Jessica Shirvington Page 0,90

again. I wouldn’t have to go through any more pain, wouldn’t have to live in this world another moment without him, remember how much I wanted him.

I cupped the pills in my hand, letting them fall through my fingers before doing it again. Wherever he’d gone, could I not go with him?

But the minutes passed and still I couldn’t take the pills. I kept thinking of Maddie. If I did this, I’d be leaving her just like he’d left me.

‘What have you done to me?’ I cried.

Because as much as I didn’t want to, I could hear all the things Ethan had tried to tell me so clearly. The way he’d said that he only existed because I’d been there to see it. He’d been telling me then. I just wasn’t listening. Telling me that my memories of him would make him go on. Was I his only witness?

Ethan had wanted to live. He’d done everything he could to try to stay here, and when that failed, he’d given all of his hope, all of his life, to me.

I hated him so much.

I loved him more.

I understood now, why he’d liked the idea of my two lives, the idea that we went on. I got it. He’d wanted more, and to him … I had it. I shook my head at myself, more tears beginning to stream. No wonder I’d frustrated him so much. I didn’t know how he’d put up with me – and even more, fallen in love with me. I could almost picture him standing there, looking at the pills in my hand and telling me I was being a damn fool – and worse, making him an accessory.

Ethan had believed I could never know what future one life might offer at any time. He’d made me promise to think about this choice I was making – to consider not only what it would be like to have one life, but what I’d be missing out on if I left my Roxbury world behind. I picked up the pills and jammed them back in the box, half cursing him, half missing him more than ever. He was right.

‘Ethan,’ I sobbed. ‘God, I want you back.’

Leaving this world, this grief, would be easy – but it would stay with me in my other life and what would I have in its place? Would I eventually come to believe this life was a fabrication? That Ethan had never been real? I wouldn’t be able to trust the truth of my memories, and I needed to be able to do that, always. To remember Ethan: his messy heap of hair, his kind searching eyes, the gardens where we’d lain together, the walks we took, the kisses we shared. If I left this world, who would remember everything that was amazing about him, and us?

I wrapped my arms around my waist, rocking in my ocean of sorrow. I had to hold a pillow to my face to stifle my gurgling cries. Every breath made it worse.

I had thought death was the answer. I had believed it would be the thing that would give me the world I wanted and needed.

The worst of it was …

I was right.

It just wasn’t my death.

Ethan had said that life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans. It was true. I’d been so obsessed with fixing what was broken, I didn’t see all the other things that were going on around me – his illness most of all. I’d known something wasn’t right, but I’d been so caught up in the immediacy of my world, I’d made it too easy for him to keep his secret. I’d thought I was going through something terrible and was angry at him for leaving me alone. All the while it had been him facing his end, alone.

Dex was another failing. If I’d had my eyes open, I would’ve noticed how possessive he’d become. I would’ve been honest about my feelings earlier and distanced myself from him. Maybe that night would never have happened …

I wrapped up all the pills and shoved them back under my mattress. Then I stood up only to collapse to the floor a minute later and burst into another bout of gut-wrenching tears.

Eventually I would have to stop, but not now. Eventually I would go on – for me, for him, for the brief memory of us that meant so much – but behind closed doors there would be a part of me