"Do you remember, Jayce?" Echos all around and he is awoken once more. "Do you remember?" He turned his head aimlessly, checking his visibility for the hundredth time. The voice, rattling in his injured head, kept repeating the same question, asking something he didn't quite understand.
Recollections of the past were nonexistent, so he came to assume that he did not, in fact, remember.
He lay still, chest pulsing as he tried to take a breath. That's right...he couldn't breath here. There was no air for him, for anything like him.
"You don't remember. You don't remember, Jayce?" They asked anew, responsive to his weak reply. He wanted to shake his head but something around him prevented it. The pressure of this water, and the suffocating blackness... He couldn't help but wish he was anywhere else, instead of drowning endlessly at the bottom of this ocean. He felt himself falling ever more, wondering how long it would take him to pass away again, or at least hit the bottom.
"You'll remember, Jayce. You'll remember it all." And Jayce shut his eyes, wishing he didn't have to remember again, wishing all of this would end, instead of repeat and repeat and repeat once more. Because there was no hope for him and there was no point in living, but this was how life was for him. Hope was flawed. Hope was useless. Hope was dead... just like he should be.
"I'll remember then forget." He muttered into the dark, and the essence of a laugh escaped him, swimming into the water helplessly for no one to hear.
STORY 4
BOOK 2 of Loving November Grace
Five years ago I was swept up in this storm.
The storm of him.
And for a beautiful second, our clouds, they collided.
Our skin hydrated. Loving the way the rain felt across our nerves. The electricity, the lightning burning us.
And this storm it broke and fixed me all at once.
It tore down everything in it's path, destroyed walls and melted ice I thought was forever going to be inside of me, but it also nurtured my heart and I grew. I grew and I survived everything after; all the consequences of loving him.
We survived.
I was left with memories, and imprints that only whispered to be heard.
And even they faded over the years.
I wasn't ever going to see him again and that was okay.
It was okay until it wasn't. Until it wasn't a reality.
And he walked right into my little coffee shop.
Because when two points are destined to touch, when paths are pushed together, forced to cross-
There's no rule that they only cross once.
If the universe wants it, it will always find a way to make the connection.
Cole and I lost each other, and I thought that was fate, that is what was destined for us. It was the safest thing for us all.
It still is. And that is fine.
But when we did meet again, all those years later- it wasn't. Nothing at all was fine.
There are so many reasons why I should have stayed away, so many reasons why that fire, that fire should have gone out by now, and nothing but ash should be left.
Yet it burned. Us. Them. It was destructive and neither of us even wanted it.
But.
It's us.
Our hearts are old friends, our skin, etched with each other's fingertips.