Page 2 of The Last Kiss

Oh God. My breath comes even faster.

The next life… it’s almost here and I still don’t know if I even believe. How can I go not knowing?

Stop everything. I want a do over.

This can’t be it.

Strong fingers entwine with mine. “Ma petite fleur, look at me.”

I do, unable to keep my eyes from his. The shining pools staring back at me almost make me lose my mind. “I’ll never leave. Be damned any promise I ever made.”

A smile ghosts my mouth. “Cheater.”

He shrugs, pure Gaelic charm. “Hey, I never said I wasn’t.” The brightening of his face calms my heart, exhaustion tugs me down.

I don’t want to close my eyes.

What if I close them and nothing happens ever again?

What if that’s it? Forever and ever.

“Don’t be scared,” he whispers.

Scared.

“I am,” I whisper back.

Turning my face with gentle fingers, he stamps a soft kiss on my lips. Even at the end of my days it’s still the most beautiful taste. Warm and succinct, just the perfect pressure, the perfect time; not too long, not too short.

“I’m so glad I got to kiss you.”

“Well…” His lips curve. “That’s not all we’ve done.”

“Lay with me.” My fingers feebly tap the bed.

“You know where that ends.” He frowns at the size of the hospital bed. He’s six foot four and built for rugby and doing things to me that turn me inside out and upside down.

“Squeeze on.”

Henri glances at the door. For an awful moment I think he’s going to leave me. That he’s going to do as I asked. But then he toes his shoes and kicks them off, loafers on a hospital floor next to my unused fluffy slippers.

He settles down, curving a protective embrace around my failing chest. “I’m sorry,” he mutters.

“Don’t be.”

Dampness lands on my shoulder and I feel him sob gently, his large frame rocking me like a babe in arms.

Undo me.

But then I am undone.

There’s nothing left to untangle.

“I wish I could be your Juliette again. Wish we could go back, do it all over.” I almost shout it. I don’t want to go to the other side of never without him knowing just what it’s meant, what he’s meant. Being his Juliette was magical, it made the last few months something more than I ever would have thought they could have been. Being his Julianna…has changed my life.

Henri turns, a tear still dangling on the edge of his dark lashes like the last droplet on months of insanity.

“You’ll always be my Juliette, my Julianna, my everything.” He’s humoured me so much, put up with my rules, the way I’ve needed things to be. I know he’s left everything to be here with me right here at the end. God, it really must be a love thing after all.