Last Chance for Love(9)

“My husband?” the woman questioned.

“Is fine,” Katie sang. “He will be fine for now, but you are to come with me.”

“Come where?”

“You know where,” Katie said. “You’ve always known.”

The woman nodded and smiled and reached out a hand. Katie took it in her own.

“I knew you’d come,” she said. “I knew it. I waited, and I knew.”

“It will hurt at first,” Katie said. “Just hold tight and it’ll be over before you know it, okay?”

And then Katie did the strangest thing. She reached into the woman and pulled. Screams filled the air, echoing around them, and though the doctors and the nurses did not seem to notice a thing Katie did. He watched her as she worked on the woman and in no time at all, something gave and the elderly woman was standing next to Katie, her arms seeking Katie’s for support.

In that moment, Nick understood exactly what his wife had meant. This was what Katie did. She collected the souls of the dead, comforted them, reassured them, and took them wherever they had to go. This was her now. She wasn’t waiting on the other side for him. She’d been right here all along, doing what she was meant to do.

There would be no together for them above, wherever or whatever the hell that was. How could there be when Katie had her job to do? And as Nick sucked in the thought and imagined the possibilities it all crystallized and he knew then, exactly what he had to do. It came to him as if truth, as if he’d known from the very minute he’d ran his fingers through her golden hair.

If Katie could not come with him then surely he would have to stay with her.





Chapter Eleven





The dead woman’s soul reached out, and Ripley helped her to steady herself before pulling her away from her old body. It was never a good idea to let them linger, although this woman at least seemed pleased, eager enough even to get moving.

“Wait here,” Ripley said, once they were a distance away, and then she swung the scythe, severing the soul from the body. The woman shuddered and smiled. “Thank you.”

Ripley smiled back, even though the woman couldn’t see it and moved her away until they reached Nick. Her heart clenched when she saw him, waiting alone, his face a mask of different emotions, chief amongst them what looked like panic. She swallowed and tried to pull her emotions together. Of course, he would be panicking. He’d just seen her do something that anyone would be scared of. Hell it scared her still, and she’d done it more times than she could even begin to count.

“I have to take you both above now,” Ripley said, trying and failing to keep her voice steady.

“Katie, you can’t,” Nick said. “I won’t let you take me.”

She swallowed down a lump and shook her head. “There is no choice, Nick. Don’t you see?”

“I see plenty,” he said. “More than you maybe.”

Ripley took his hand and pulled the elderly woman to her. Whether Nick wanted to go or not was irrelevant. There was no fucking choice! There was never a choice.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

In a flash, the three of them moved from the hospital room to the place where all souls went at first. The place Ripley took them, one after the other.

Lucia called it the field of souls, and that was a good a term as any in Ripley’s opinion. It was beautiful, of course. How could it be anything else? The green of the grass seemed to go on forever, the daisies and the buttercups picking up the surrounding light and throwing it back out in showers of sparkles. A perfect stillness surrounded them, the very air beating with a sort of intense peacefulness. As she always did, Ripley sucked it all in, pulling as much of the perfection into her as she could.

“They’ll come for you here soon,” she whispered. “Then they’ll take you to the gates where you’ll move on to the next place.”

“It is so beautiful here,” the elderly woman said. She turned to Nick and smiled. “Why wouldn’t you want to come here?”

Nick shook his head. “Because Katie is my wife.”

“Katie?” the woman asked.

Nick gestured in her direction, and the woman’s eyes widened. “Oh, good grief.”

“Take me back,” he said, ignoring the woman’s enquiring gaze and shocked words. “Back down there or back to where you are. Wherever. I don’t care so long as we’re together.”

“I can’t.” Saying those words to him was one of the hardest things Katie had ever done, and she shuddered inside. Why did he have to make it so difficult for her? Couldn’t he see how hard this was? How much it pained her? More than anything, she regretted signing up to Reaperdom, but she’d been so confused, hurting so much. She’d thought that Nick would live a long happy life, and what else did that leave for her? What else could possibly fill the long hours and the many days, and the constant years?

“This is my life now,” she told him, her heart breaking to say the words. “I signed up for this. I agreed. A century of collecting the souls of the dead. I signed the contract, and I’m not allowed back here, properly here I mean, until those years are over.”

“You signed up?” he breathed.

“Yes.”

“With who? How? I don’t understand.”

“With the person who runs the Reaper teams of course.”

“I see….”

“This is what I have to do, Nick. For the next ninety-five years at least this is my life.” She paused, unsure if it was even fair to say the next words, but knowing she would anyway. “It’s wrong to ask. I know it is. But if you could wait for me….”

Nick smiled, that brilliant smile, lighting his face up all over again, and Ripley’s heart thudded. Ninety-five years was not that long, was it? If Nick would hold on for her one day they could be together again….

“There’s no need for that,” he said, interrupting her frantic, desperate thoughts. “No one has to wait for anyone, because there is no way we’re going to be apart ever again, Katie. No bloody way.” And he lifted his head, looked around the field of souls and smiled. “I’m signing up, too.”





Chapter Twelve





Like when they moved from the hospital room to the field of souls, it took but a second. One moment he was breathing in the smell of cut grass and flowers and the next, he was in a small room that smelled faintly of lavender. As soon as he looked around, Nick knew whose room it was. Katie’s, of course. It was an exact replica of their bedroom back on Earth. The flowered cushions decorating the bed and the crotched rugs spread across the floor. All of it achingly familiar.

She gasped as she, too, looked around. “How….”

Nick laughed, his heart fairly racing with the knowledge of what it all meant. Knowledge that seemed to come out of nowhere, but seemed so obvious and real that he knew it was true. Almost like a voice whispering in his ear. A feeling of extreme gratefulness filled him from top to toe, and he sent out a silent thank you to whoever had made it possible. “I’m guessing that was an acceptance of my signing up.”

“But, Nick….” She paused and shook her head. “It’s a horrible job. Just horrible, and dangerous, too. Collecting the souls of the dead is probably the most difficult thing you will ever do. I’d never have wanted this for you, never. I wish I’d never signed up! If only I’d known!”

He pulled her into his arms. Exulting at the feel of her soft flesh next to his. The thought crossed his mind that maybe it wasn’t even flesh anymore, was something else entirely. But he didn’t care. Katie was here with him. She was still her, and nothing else mattered.

“No,” he whispered, because it broke his heart to hear her say such things. None of this was her fault, and how could either of them ever rally against something that, in the end, brought them back together again? That was all that mattered in the end surely. The two of them, having each other again, being in love again—always. “The hardest thing has been living these past years without you,” he said. “Feeling little bits of myself slip away with each day. Knowing you had my heart with you and that there was no way to ever get it back until we met again. I dreamed of it, Katie. Every single night I dreamed of you. Wanting you and needing you, and every few days I brought you out to think about. Imagining and considering and though it broke my heart, I knew I’d do it for the rest of my life, because without you, even just the thought of you, nothing meant anything anymore.”

Tears spilled down her eyes, and Katie gasped. “It’s been so hard for me, too, Nick. So hard and I wished and hoped, but I never imagined….”

Nick reached up to brush the tears away. “I love you, baby. Always have. Always will. I’d sign up for a million years of this just for a few seconds with you.”

And then he did what he’d wanted to do for so damn long. He leant down and finally, finally, took her lips in his. Their kiss was fast and frantic, soft and soothing, and it sent fire racing through this new body of his. Every sensation seemed magnified, as if it was a million times more than it should have been. He could taste something on her lips, something magical. Feel her soft breath mixing with his, the very essence of their souls combining and he shuddered. Shocked and amazed by the wonder of it all.