The Timekeeper

Chapter Twenty-Four

His eyes finally landed on me after adjusting to the brightness of the room. I could see that he was searching for a snarky comment to say, trying to find the right thing to say as I sat on top of him staring down in complete shock.

"Well," he croaked. "This is not what I had ever expected to wake up to."

I stared wide-eyed at him. His eyes were blinking, his chest was moving; he was as alive as a person could be. I burst into tears, though it was more like tears on top of tears, since I hadn’t really stopped crying since I got here. He raised his eyebrow, clearly confused at both the fact that I was here on top of him in the middle of the night, and that I could barely look at him without letting out another sob. I hated crying in front of people. It was like they were seeing the real you, the raw, unedited version of yourself that you hid from the rest of the world.

“Candice? Are you okay?” Jase asked when the tears had started to recede. He attempted to sit up, and before I knew it was I was wrapping my arms around his neck, almost knocking him back down. I hadn’t thought I would ever be in this position, never thought I’d be so close to losing my soul mate, well at least not for another fifty years. And now that he was here- in my arms and unmistakeably alive- I couldn’t bear the thought that if I let him go, I might really lose him this time.

"I-I thought you were- it said you were-" I blubbered into his shoulder, unable to string a proper sentence together.

"Thought I was what?" he asked after I finally let him go. The tears began streaming down my face as I remembered seeing his body lying on the bed, unmoving and peaceful. I looked down at my wrist, even though the sleeve of my brother’s jumper covered it. Was it still there? Had the red line even shown at all, or had I just imagined the whole thing? I pulled up my sleeve and showed him my wrist, waiting for his reaction. It would either tell me this had all been a misunderstanding, that I had just imagined what I saw, or it would tell me I wasn’t so crazy, but that meant a whole other problem. He gave me a funny look, before he really looked down at my wrist.

"Wait, what?" He asked moments later, confirming that I was, in fact, sane and hadn’t imagined the line. His fingers traced around the small strip of metal on the inside of my wrist, as if he was trying to fix it, trying to make the red line disappear. It didn't move though, just sat there like a bloody stain. His touch sent shivers through my body, as though my body wasn’t yet used to him. "What do you think this means?"

"I-I don't know," I stuttered after a while. My heart, although it had slowed, was still beating faster than normal. My body seemed to be still in shock, unable to process what had happened within the last hour. It felt like so long ago, like a lifetime had passed, since I first saw the red line. It was strange that time could feel longer or shorter, depending on what was happening in the world around us. When you were sitting in maths class, the time seemed to stop and drag on forever, but when you were catching up with an old friend who you haven’t seen in years, time would fly by.

"Are we not soul mates?” Jase asked softly. I gave him a funny look, before really registering what he had actually asked. I hadn’t even thought about that possibility yet. That would explain why Jase was still alive, but then again, our Timekeeper’s had lead us to each other. They had chimed as both our countdowns reached zero, which was exactly what was supposed to happen when you met your soul mate.

“Maybe your Timekeeper just broke?” Jase questioned, unable to take his eyes off my wrist.

“I've never even heard of them breaking before," I yawned, suddenly feeling extremely tired. The adrenaline that got me here was clearly wearing off, and now my body was trying to tell me to get back to sleep. ‘It’s the middle of the night, why on earth are you awake?’ I could imagine it telling me, though obviously my body doesn’t have it’s own mind or way of talking. “I didn’t think that was even possible.”