Page 99 of The Edge of Always

Chapter Twenty-Three

The hotel room comes back to me in fragments. The heavy curtains, the dark floor, the huge lighting, the mirror.

The mirror.

I can see myself in the mirror. I’m on the floor, sprawled out like a rag doll. I hate the fact you can see my ribs, but there’s also a naked Emmett which I love. I think I blacked out for a moment there, and now my chest is rising and falling quickly, as I start to panic.

‘Nice of you to rejoin us.’ Emmett rolls on his side to face me, and I’m rewarded with a great view of his arse in the mirror. My mouth is dry though and I’m still feeling shaky. Emmett realises a fraction of a second after I do that I don’t feel good. My pulse is rapid, beating hard in my head.

‘Luna,’ Emmett frowns, ‘is everything okay?’

Not really, the edges of my vision are blurred.

‘I haven’t taken my meds yet,’ I tell him, blinking quickly, trying to count my breaths. ‘My pill box is in my bag, could you maybe bring it?’ I say, settling back against the pillows that he drags off the bed and props under my head.

I hate feeling like I’m broken.

‘Hey, it’s okay.’ A still-naked Emmett hands me the pills and a glass of water. Since I sort them into a box that has times of the day on it, it doesn’t say what the medicine is for, but still.

‘That’s a lot of medicine for someone who had glandular fever,’ Emmett says, kneeling next to me and putting the back of his hand on my forehead as I knock them back like the pro that I am.

‘It’s like vitamins and stuff.’ I don’t even sound convincing to myself and I think, tell him now, you idiot! He’s here, helping, he’s a doctor, he can help.

But I’m leaving tomorrow. That’s all we get. And information like this, it fills up space and time. There’s no shying away from it. It would take all of everything.

‘I feel better already.’ Emmett puts a blanket over me.

It’s true, I do. Maybe I did just need to rest.

I want to get back to feeling sexy. Emmett is still naked, and I’m only human after all, but there’s just no natural segue back from squeezing someone’s nipple and then moments later handing them a giant pill organiser. What do you do next?

Emmett obviously doesn’t know either; he’s just kneeling next to me, looking stressed. There’s a vein on the side of his forehead that wasn’t there before.

‘Hey, it’s fine,’ I tell him. ‘I feel fine, relax. Get in here.’

He gets more pillows and comes to lay next to me on the floor, brushing my hair back off my face. ‘You’re okay,’ he tells me. ‘I’m okay.’

I mean, I’m not. And the weight of the constant lying settles over me as Emmett kisses my forehead.

My eyes flutter shut as the kisses carry on; it’s gentler this time, softer. Sometime later we make it onto the bed at last; I think I want to take this moment and stretch it out for all of time. As Emmett moves above me, I think that I want this to never, ever have to end.

My body is in a sort of constant battle between being excited and just wanting to go to sleep. An afternoon of sex with a long-lost love and a couple of mild cardiac episodes will do that to a person.

‘I booked the class,’ I tell Emmett. He has his head buried in my hair where I’m laid over his chest.

‘You’re tired,’ he says, ‘you don’t have to go.’

‘It’s my last chance – the final point in the quest. Now or never.’

He is silent for a beat. And then he’s moving.

‘Come on then, we’d better go.’

It feels like Paris itself knows that something big is happening. The stars seem especially bright. The streetlights glow with extra warmth. People laugh louder, or else chatter in cafés with more vividness. It’s like the city knows that there’ll be a choice to make, and soon. Or maybe I’m projecting, looking for things that aren’t really there.

‘Are you okay to wait and eat after?’ Emmett asks. I think he’s become a feeder in his old age. He’s obsessed with feeding me.

‘I’m fine, honestly. I’m too excited to eat.’