and she told him through the magic that enveloped them that she needed the completion of his name, his call, his definition. There was no separate when they were like this, no him and her, no beginning or end. A whole.
It was ever a reunion when he came to her.
Ever the closing of a loop.
Ever a return to the home she had been thrown out of.
But he always left her. He never stayed. And it was too soon, the departure, no matter how long they had together.
If she only knew his name, though… he would be real. He would stay with her through the wakefulness that was the thief of him. He would be next to her rather than inside of her. His name would change everything…
Their bodies fell into place, the lock and the key, the question answered, the reason given for that which had been illogical.
The wound healed.
Tighter, she gripped him. Stronger, she pulled him to her. Harder, she concentrated on every shift of his body, every penetration of his sex, every surge of pleasure.
Always the parting.
No matter how long he was with her, he was always on the verge of leaving her behind, taking with him part of her heart, the cleaving a curse as much as the union was a blessing. He was beautiful moonlight eclipsed by the cloud cover; he was the still summer night interrupted by the violent storm; he was the warmth that flared before the brutal, numbing winter’s arrival.
He was the last sweet breath taken before drowning.
Tears, now. Tears torn from her.
Stay with me, she begged him. Just this once. Do not go—
For the first time, in all the years she had known him, he stopped and looked down into her eyes.
His hand trembled as he brushed her long, dark curls from her face.
When he did not reply, his silence said enough. Said it all.
There was no divide between never and ever for them. Theirs was the space in between known and unknown, between the finite and the endless, proof that love was the tie that bound, but it was a faulty trip wire, changing nothing when death created the distance.
In his silence, her heart broke.
Again…
…always.
* * *
Therese, blooded daughter of who the hell knew, shoved a hand into her cheap purse and pushed her wallet, a Kleenex pack, her ChapStick, and a hairbrush around. Change rattled on the very bottom and gave her brief hope, but her keys were still missing.
God, she was exhausted and she did not have time for this. That damn dream had kept her awake even as she’d slept, the dried tears on her face when she’d surfaced something she was really frickin’ sick of, thank you very much. How many years had her subconscious been coughing that stuff up?
Ever since she could remember. And even before the bad thing with her family—
Across the hall from her apartment, a muffled yell and the crash of a broken lamp—or maybe it was dishes again?—brought her head up. The door to her one-room flat was standard-sized in terms of height and width, but it didn’t seem thick enough. Although considering who else lived in this rooming house? She’d need one that was a foot deep and maybe made of something flame-retardant.
Back to her key search. They were definitely not in her purse, and courtesy of that dream, she’d slept through her alarm, so she was late for work. But she had to find them. And come on, there was only like, what, three hundred square feet to cover, tops. And that included the bathroom and the galley kitchen. Plus she was a nasty-neat who cleaned up after herself with a discipline that bordered on obsession. She could do this.
As she lifted up the cushions of the worn sofa, checked all the counters again, and shook out the blankets on her murphy bed, she refused to look at her watch. She did not need confirmation that she was late, late, late. She was supposed to have been at Sal’s Restaurant for her shift waiting tables about an hour ago, and she could not afford to lose that job.
Maybe she needed to take some Ambien or something. Her perennial heartache dream aside, this rooming house was loud twenty-four hours a day. If one of the tenants wasn’t yelling at somebody they lived with or next to or across the hall from, then they were burning food on their stove, throwing things that broke, or stomping around in concrete overshoes.
Closing her eyes,