A beat of silence passed between us and I nodded.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll show you. But I have no idea how many lives you’ve lived. I have no control over what you’ll see. It’s likely you’ll see something that impacted you. Scarred your soul, so to speak. I can’t promise that memory will be good.”
“I don’t care. I’ll take it.”
I leaned into Cash as he lay back onto the pillows. He was shaking. If I were him, I would have been shaking, too, with the impossibility of what I was about to show him. My palm was warm. Glowing with power. I clasped it over his forehead and he closed his eyes, shuddering out a breath.
“Are you ready?” I whispered.
Cash nodded.
“Just breathe,” I said, just before we fell right into the pulsing heart of a memory a thousand years old.
I sat on the beach. Sand sifting through my fingers. My toes. A breeze ruffled my braids and the hem of my dress. The sun, just an echo from the day, was fading fast, sinking into the depths of the horizon behind the sea. I heard footsteps behind me and smiled.
“I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” Tarik said. The wind caught his dark curls and tossed them into his eyes. He pushed them away and grinned down at me. “We’re going to be late.”
“I’ve been right here.” I looked up at him, losing my breath. The chiseled line of his jaw. The way the sun reflected off his skin, making it a shade darker than honey. No wonder the other girls in the village hated me. That heartbreakingly beautiful smile was for me. Only me. I held out my hand and let Tarik help me up. He brushed the sand from my skirt, businesslike, efficient. I still flushed and felt a rush of heat flow through me. I laced my fingers through his and we headed into the village. The smell of warm baked bread wafted through windows. The cobblestone street was spotted with shiny slick dots of moisture. Tarik squinted up at the dark sky and sighed.
“I think we’re about to get wet.”
As the words left his lips, the rain started to pour. Sheets of it created a wet, blurry curtain between us and the world. I held up my hands and laughed. The water streamed down my skin, pounded against my open palms, and I loved it. Loved the sound of Tarik laughing beside me. His black hair plastered to his scalp. His white shirt becoming one with his skin. He yanked me under the ledge of a building and pressed me as close to the clay wall as he could get me.
“We’re missing dinner,” I said through a smile. Water from his chin dripped onto my nose. “Your mother will be furious.”
He smiled and pushed the wet braids back from my face, securing them behind my neck.
“I think this might be worth her wrath,” he whispered. Tarik closed the space between us and kissed me. He kissed me like he was dying and I was feeding him the oxygen he needed to survive. I’d never in my life been as consumed by another person as I was in that moment. I’d never been as in love as
I’d been in that moment. Tarik’s hands slid up the backs of my thighs and lifted me against the wall.
The rain beat against his back as he pressed into me, sheltering me from the storm.
“I don’t want to wait anymore,” he whispered into my mouth. “I want you. I want to feel the way I feel right now, forever.” He stopped to claim another kiss from my mouth and broke away when I whimpered.
“I love you, Anaya,” he said, burning me with his gaze. Water streaming down his face. “Say you love me as much as I love you.”
“I love you.” I barely got the words out before his lips crushed against mine, stealing the breath in my mouth. He tasted like rain. He tasted like what I wanted the rest of my life to taste like. And I knew in that moment that I didn’t want to wait any longer for him, either.
I gasped as the sound of voices approaching tore apart the memory and blew it from my grasp. I tried to sit back away from Cash, but his fist was closed around my dress, refusing to let me go. His eyes were so wide, his mouth half-open, the words refusing to come. Something inside the hollow of my chest was hammering. The memory. Remembering what it had felt like to be that alive. I looked up at
Cash and jerked my dress from his grip.
“No…it can’t be…” I bit my lip. “You can’t be…”
I shut my eyes, trying to compose myself as the door closed behind the footsteps entering the room.
“Anaya…what was that?” Cash whispered.
“It’s you,” Emma said, angry and surprised. “Anaya. I remember you.”
She stormed forward as if I were the enemy and not the one who had given her her memories of
Finn back.
“What are you doing here?” She glared at me before her gaze flitted to Cash. “Why did you do this to him? This is all your fault! You get that, right?”
“Em, cool it,” he said. “Anaya…was that real? That was you. That was me. I felt you.” He reached out, dazed, and placed his hand on my leg, his eyes tracing over every part of me. “I…I…”
“Hello?” Emma threw her hands up. “She did this to you! Are you forgetting about that part, Cash?
Snap out of it.”
“Emma,” Finn said, placing a sturdy hand on her shoulder. His eyes, eyes that had seen beyond forever, looked at us with a strange kind of understanding. He pulled her back a little. “Don’t.”
Emma looked back and forth between Finn and Cash, eyes wide and disbelieving. Her watery gaze finally settled on me.
“You were supposed to take him weeks ago!” She held her hand out. “He is suffering because of you. How can you just sit there and let him die? Why? I just want to know why?”
She broke into sobs and I turned away. I let my gaze settle on Cash’s face. His eyes. Tarik’s eyes.
Oh my God… I stood up, suddenly painfully aware of the demanding call of heat at my hip. “I can’t…I can’t do this now. I’m being called.”
Cash just looked at me as if he didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what to say, either. I still couldn’t believe this. He couldn’t be Tarik. He couldn’t. Tarik was in Heaven. He was waiting for me.
This had to be some kind of illusion. But…it wasn’t. The memories never lied.
I turned to Emma and took a step forward until we were toe to toe. Her eyes opened a little wider, but she stood her ground, her pretty jaw clenched in fear or anger. Maybe a little of both.
“If anything happens to him while I’m gone, I will hold you responsible,” I said, my whisper like venom. “If the life is gone from his eyes when I return, then I will bring the wrath of the Almighty down on the both of you.” My eyes flicked up to Finn, who was reeling Emma into his arms, fire in his eyes like a challenge.
“Back off, Anaya,” he said. “We’ll keep him safe. You’re not the only one who gives a damn about him.”
We all turned around when we heard monitors wail behind us. Cash threw his legs over the bed, jerking IVs out of his wrist.
“Cash, what are you doing?” Emma rushed over to help him.
“I’m leaving,” he said, holding her watery gaze with his. “Are you going to help me or not? I want to go home, Em. I don’t need this hospital. And I sure as hell don’t need a babysitter, let alone three of them. Everyone needs to stop acting like I can’t take care of myself.”
I let one last look pass between Finn and me before I settled my fingers around my blade and gave in. He nodded once. I closed my eyes and dissolved into the light.
Chapter 22
Cash
“I wish you’d stay at my house, or at least let me or Finn stay here with you,” Emma said, smoothing the comforter on my bed for the millionth time.