Midnight Valentine(100)

She lifts her brows, an expression of humor on her face. “Oh, did you miss that day at school? See, there’s this thing called a sperm—”

I grab her arms and shout into her face, “I’M PREGNANT? WITH A BABY?”

Dissolving into laughter, she says, “No, with a piñata. Of course with a baby!”

A loud, frantic beeping emits from one of the machines hooked up to Theo.

We both freeze, then Ana reacts first. She hustles over to his bed, peers at a black box with some green flashing numbers, then turns around and runs past me, shouting for a doctor.

“Ana!” I scream after her, panicked. “What’s happening!”

She’s headed for the nurses’ station down the hall, yelling over her shoulder as she goes. “His heartbeat is skyrocketing!” She disappears around a corner.

I whirl around and run to Theo’s bedside, so frantic, I catch my foot on the leg of a chair and almost fall. I grab his hand and collapse onto the bed, panting, terrified at all the flashing I see on the machines. It’s not only the heartbeat monitor that’s going mad—several other devices screech with alarms.

This is it. He’s dying.

I start to sob uncontrollably. “Don’t you dare leave me, Theo! Don’t you dare! I love you! I need you! I’ll never forgive you if you leave me alone!”

Pressure on my hand, so faint I almost can’t feel it, cuts off my hysterical screams as if someone pulled a plug. I freeze, looking down at Theo’s hand clasped in mine…his hand that’s weakly squeezing.

Time slows to a crawl. Every beat of my heart is a boom of thunder in my ears. I look up at his face and watch in utter astonishment and joy as the second miracle of the night occurs.

Theo slowly opens his eyes and looks at me.

His gaze is hazy at first but gains focus after several moments. Then we stare at each other for an endless span of silence as I wait without breathing to see if he recognizes me.

Is he even in there at all?

Squeezing his hand hard, I lean over his chest and plead, “Theo? Theo, can you hear me? Can you speak?” When he doesn’t respond, tears begin to flow down my cheeks again. I feel my face crumbling, and the last of my hope unravels at the blankness I see in his dark, dark eyes.

Sobbing, I beg, “Please, if you can hear me, please say something!”

Finally, after what feels like forever, the corners of his lips curve to a ghost of a smile.

In a weak, scratchy voice, the words halting and almost unintelligible, he whispers, “It wasn’t enough.”

“What? What do you mean?” I can barely speak, I’m crying so hard. My entire body is racked with sobs. When his lips move but no words come out, I lean closer, putting my ear near his mouth and begging him to say it again.

On the faintest of exhalations, he does.

“One lifetime wasn’t enough to love you.”

I fall to my knees as a team of doctors and nurses bursts into the room.





Epilogue





Theo





Two months later



Fucking yellow balloons.

It’s the dumbest thing to be scared of, right? Right. So imagine my surprise when I woke up in the hospital after my accident—my first accident, that is—saw a kid carrying a yellow balloon down the hallway, and got so scared, it felt like I was having a heart attack.

That was the first clue something strange was going on.

At first, I assumed it was the brain injury. Getting your head rammed by a steel rocket doing eighty miles per hour isn’t good for the old noggin, we can all agree on that. But then the voices started. Faint little whispers at my ear. One female, one male. The male was a pain in my ass, to be honest. Always going on about lightning strikes and football stats and B&Bs. Made no sense whatsoever.

The female voice, though. Hearing her was like hearing an angel.

She had this amazing laugh, as silky smooth as flowing water. That laugh was sexy as fuck. It rang in my ears like music.

Yeah, I had a thing for the imaginary voice in my head. Don’t judge me.

And don’t get me started about how my own voice had changed and now sounded exactly like the other whispering voice in my head—the irritating male.

If things weren’t looking fucked enough, I had all these memories that didn’t fit. Things I hadn’t done, places I’d never been, people I’d never met before.

Then the dreams started.

Nightmares, technically, because they were so scary. It wasn’t so much the dreams themselves that were scary, but how vivid they were. It was like I was there, in them.

Like I was living someone else’s life at night.

Then there were all these new habits and desires I suddenly had. Bear claws for breakfast every day? Sure, why not. French wine that costs two hundred bucks a bottle? Yeah, gotta have me some of that.