Hello Stranger

by West, Jade

  “Thank you, darling, because I need that too. I can’t say goodbye until I know you’re going to be holding his hand at my funeral.”

  “I will be, I promise. I swear.”

  Tears ran down her cheeks as mine did, both of us trying to smile, and with that she reached up behind her and pulled an envelope out from behind her elephant postcard.

  “On that note, sweetheart, I need you to promise me something else.”

  “Anything.”

  She handed the envelope over, and the scribble only made the tears fall harder.

  Logan.

  It was a letter for Logan.

  “Please make sure he gets this,” she said.

  And with that, she gave up.

  She lay back against her pillows, and smiled as she let out a breath, tears still flowing as I watched the weight of the world fly away.

  I kissed her hand before I got up from my seat, choking back my tears as my legs found their strength.

  Then I rushed to get Logan.

  42

  Logan

  Chloe shook me awake, trying to hold back the tears and failing.

  The words were out of my mouth without any thought.

  “Has she gone? Has she?”

  A shake of the head from a sobbing Chloe as she grabbed for my hand and pulled me from my bed.

  It doesn’t matter how prepared you think you are to say your goodbyes, it falls to nothing as that pain slams like molten hell in your gut. When the little boy is screaming inside, begging that his mum doesn’t die. Please, please, don’t take my mummy. Please, no. Please. When your memories tumble right the way through you, all the things you wanted to do, all the things you wanted to say. All the things you’d said and wished you hadn’t. All the things you are losing, when your rock of a mother takes her final breaths.

  I don’t know how I found my feet. I don’t know how I kept my breaths steady as I followed Chloe with her tears streaming down her cheeks and crossed the landing to Mum’s bedroom.

  Chloe held back, my little jitterbug hovering just a second with wide eyes, not quite sure whether I wanted her there or not.

  I did.

  I needed her there. I needed her hand in mine. I needed her at my side, and at Mum’s side, because she’d given us so much. Loved us so much. My beautiful freckle-faced girl had only been with us a fleeting moment of time in our world, but it was worth a lifetime.

  She was worth a lifetime.

  The man I’d become, so sure of his footing, was falling. The terrified child within me was peering through with scared eyes, no matter how hard I tried to hide him.

  Chloe’s head was on my shoulder, my hand gripped tight as I leant in and took hold of Mum’s fingers.

  I sucked in a breath as Mum’s eyes flickered open, and I saw it there in her smile, the pure joy in her heart as she saw my jitterbug there alongside me.

  Her eyes were happy, even as she neared her end.

  Her grip on mine was firm, even as her body reached its limits.

  “I love seeing you two together,” she rasped. “I’ll rest easy now.”

  I knew Chloe’s tears were streaming without looking. I knew her smile would be magical to match my mum’s, love and pain both at once.

  Then Mum’s attention was all on me, and I understood more than words could ever say. That connection. That love. That infinite bond between child and mother that nothing will ever stand a chance of replacing.

  “I’m so proud of you,” she said, “Honestly, sweetheart, I’m so proud of you. I’m so proud of the man you’ve become.”

  I couldn’t hold back the sobs, the tears.

  There were tears in her eyes, too. I could hear her straining, her desire to speak at odds with her body’s desire to breathe.

  We were quiet as we sat together, all three of us, breaths in rhythm as hers faded. I knew the end was getting nearer, and so did Chloe. She excused herself to go to the toilet, leaning in to kiss Mum on the forehead before she went. I could see it a mile off, that sweetness in her scurrying away to give us our last final moments together.

  I knew what Mum was going to say before she said it. She gave my hand the very slightest squeeze as soon as Chloe was out on the landing.

  “Don’t…” she wheezed. “Don’t you… let her go…”

  I didn’t answer, just squeezed her hand right back.

  “I love you, Logan,” she rasped, and I nodded.

  “I love you too, Mum.”

  Then she left me, giving me one final smile before her eyes closed. I felt her give up. I felt the very second she let out a sigh and slumped a final slump against her pillows. I knew she wouldn’t be opening those twinkling eyes again.

  I’d seen it enough times over the years to know that her mind was done, just the body slowing down, shutting down, the smallest of breaths. I couldn’t stand it. The tears fell, and the little boy in me piped up, one single whisper.

  “Mum.”

  Chloe must have been hovering on the landing. She stepped in when she heard my whisper and wrapped her arms tight around my shoulders as my tears came flooding, matching them with sobs of her own.

  We cried. We breathed. I held Mum’s hand as her body kept on rasping in tiny shallow breaths, and Chloe held mine.

  The tears calmed to streaks, both of us in silence as we sat there. Both of us lost in thoughts as she faded away. Fading as her petals fell, leaving just the stem, a broken body that gave up at the final mile.

  It was sunrise when her breaths finally stopped.

  The sunlight was creeping in through the curtains when I knew Mum was really gone and the little boy inside broke his heart. Gasps and sobs, hands trembling as the truth hit, stabbing deep.

  That retch of no, no, NO, when your whole body racks with the pain. Crying, begging, pleading for another minute, just another minute, just another word.

  But it was time.

  This time was really the time.

  No hopes, no miracles, no more smiles on her face or twinkles in her eyes.

  No more cackling laughter.

  My mum was gone.

  43

  Chloe

  We sat at her side, sobbing. We held each other. There was nothing words could ever say through the pain, through the loss… but there was more. There was more than the pain and the loss – enough to shine like beautiful warm lamplight in the pitch darkness.

  Love.

  I could feel it in the air all around us.

  Love that consumes you completely.

  Love that consumes your heart and wraps up your soul.

  Love for the woman just gone.

  The incredible woman just gone.

  Love for the man in my arms.

  Love for this beautiful world of theirs I’d been lucky enough to be a small part of.

  Logan calmed after a few frantic minutes, struggling to compose himself. He forced down his chokes and stilled his breaths, pressing his forehead to mine.

  “Thank you.”

  I managed a smile.

  “I will never need thanks. Ever.”

  He took a while before he called the end of life team, still holding her hand when I let the doctor in downstairs and led her up. I watched as she checked Jackie’s pulse, and did the final examination, and it felt so surreal, even though I’d been working with people at the end of their life for weeks now.

  It was nothing like watching them sign away Jackie Hall.

  The funeral director appeared when the doctor had left, and we moved along into Logan’s bedroom as they took her away. The house felt so different without her there. Silent and empty.

  I held him close, pulling him to me on the bed, both of us lost in our heads but connected in body.

  Jackie was gone.

  She was really gone.

  It was long past lunchtime by the time I ventured downstairs to get some food for us. Logan drank a glass of water, but barely touched his plate, managing only a couple of bites at the sandwich before he
retched and gave up. I barely managed any myself either, hardly a surprise.

  I abandoned the practical crap then, giving myself up to the loss as the outside world carried on turning. There was birdsong outside the window, and rumbles of cars along the street, but we didn’t move, just stayed holding each other in silence. Minutes ticking and ticking, and turning into hours,

  We were there for hours.

  He stirred at my side when the afternoon was long fading. I ran my fingers across his cheek, tracks deeply reddened by tears. I looked him in the eyes, desperate to feel him, and I could feel it there in him, too. That desperation to be felt. To be touched. To feel heart-beating flesh on flesh.

  It felt so natural when his lips pressed to mine. It felt so natural when I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and kissed him back. Slowly at first. Softly.

  But it changed.

  Over long, slow minutes, it changed.

  The primal call inside was life staking its claim. That urge for shared breaths, and touch, and warmth. That urge for closeness that swallows you whole.

  I’d never felt anything like it. I’d never felt the passion in the pain, or the call of the heart through the grief.

  Logan’s hands were fierce but loving. His rawness was fire.

  I wrapped my legs around his waist, body calling. His body answered, pulling me from my clothes as I pulled him out of his. But this wasn’t about sex. This wasn’t about pleasure, or lust. This was about two bodies connecting and wanting to feel alive. This was about bonding beyond reason. Beyond logic. Beyond anything I’d ever imagined.

  He was strong and sure as he pushed inside me, and I wanted that. I wanted the force. I wanted the life.

  His hands held mine up high, and his eyes were pleading with me and eating me up at the same time. All I had to do was dive in.

  “Take me,’ I said and I surrendered to those eyes, took Logan Hall into me as I fell into him. And I was there in the depths. This time I understood them, plunging deep, losing my breath.

  I felt it all.

  Saw it all.

  And in that moment, I knew every part of him as though it was me.

  I knew his love, and his pain, and his fear.

  I knew the tiny child in him alongside the beautiful man, with his strength, his steel, his fight.

  I didn’t come close to an orgasm. I didn’t want to. I didn’t want anything other than his flesh on mine, rhythm pounding, breaths meeting breaths as he consumed me and I consumed him right back.

  He collapsed onto me when his body gave up, his face pressed to my neck as his mind came tumbling back to him. I felt that too.

  Oh fuck, how I felt that too as his arm reached around me.

  The exposed soul that had just devoured mine was breathing hard and thinking hard.

  I felt the tension in him. Knew it wasn’t just the cogs of his mind that I could hear.

  It was the shutters coming down.

  44

  Logan

  Lying there with the divine creature that had stolen my heart, I wished I could be the man that gave hers what it deserved.

  I couldn’t.

  I could never be that man.

  The pain of losing Mum was razor sharp, slicing me in two, and it was there in Chloe, too. It was there in her eyes, shining raw along with love. Love for me.

  The sacrifice of loving a man like me was more than she should ever know.

  I held her tight to my chest as I gathered my breath, but I knew she could feel the difference in me. It was ripe through the tension in her arms.

  “Don’t do this,” she whispered. “Don’t shut me out.”

  Once again, my truth was on my tongue, desperate to spill out in a river and come crashing into hers, but no. No.

  “Get some sleep, jitterbug,” I told her, but she wouldn’t. She pulled herself up to look me in the eyes, and hers were wide, bottom lip trembling with a pain that wasn’t from losing Mum.

  “Please,” she whispered. “Don’t do this.”

  I wished I didn’t have to. I wished I cared more for myself and less for her, but I didn’t. My love for her was beyond any love I’d ever have for myself. My care for her future was more than enough to sacrifice the joy in my own.

  “Get some sleep,” I repeated, and reached up to brush stray hair from her forehead.

  I looked at her through fresh eyes as she sat above me, legs folded underneath her on the bed. I saw her freckles in the lamplight, and remembered the very first moment I saw her on the train, sitting there so sweetly, lost in her own little world.

  It would have been so much easier for her if she hadn’t been sitting on that train that morning.

  “What is it?” she asked, bringing me back to the moment. “What makes you do this? Shut me out like this?”

  I propped myself up on my elbow, wishing she wasn’t quite so astute and so answer seeking. The beauty in the purity of her truth and expression was enough to pang my heart like a hammer blow.

  She carried on talking before I could even begin to find an answer.

  “I mean, I know it must be really, really shit, and I can’t imagine what you feel like right now, I really can’t… because I feel so shit myself, and it’s nothing compared to how you must feel… but please don’t push me away. I want to be there. I want to help. I want to be the Chloe you let me be in your mum’s bedroom. I want to be the Chloe she was so happy to see you with. I want to be the Chloe that –”

  I shook my head, and she stopped speaking, those saucer eyes wide on mine.

  “Not now,” I said. “This isn’t the time for this. Just sleep. Sleep and we’ll talk in the morning.”

  “You aren’t going to sleep, though, are you?” she said. “I know you aren’t.”

  She was right. I wasn’t.

  “Get some rest,” I told her. “You’re exhausted.”

  “So are you,” she said.

  She was right. I was.

  I dropped down onto my back, staring at the ceiling and wishing this wasn’t the godawful time to be having this godawful conversation. If I hadn’t been such a reckless, short-sighted fool in the first place, then we wouldn’t have had to. She’d have been at home at her parents’ place, reading some of her favourite paperbacks and playing with her dog, none the wiser about the curse of fucking pain going on in my world.

  “We can do whatever you want,” she said. “If you want us to stay quiet, we can. If you want us to talk, we can. If you want to stay here, we can. If you want to go out, we can.”

  I loved her mantra of helpfulness, but it changed nothing. She didn’t belong here. She couldn’t.

  “You really are a beautiful little sweetheart,” I said to her, but she saw past the compliment in seconds.

  “So why are you so keen to let me go?”

  I wished I had an answer for that, but any answer I had would only make it harder for the angel to find her wings and fly the fuck away from me.

  “You are, aren’t you?” she pushed. “That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it? About me going?”

  I met her stare. “I’m thinking about you getting some sleep,” I said, but she was shaking her head.

  “You can try to get rid of me, Logan, but I don’t want to go. And even if I did, which I don’t, I promised your mum I would never walk away, and I won’t. I don’t want to.”

  “Mum didn’t understand things,” I replied, but Chloe didn’t listen, she was still shaking her head.

  “Your mum did understand things,” she said. “She understood how important you are to me, and how good we are together. She understood how much we enjoy time together and just how great the world is when we’re standing side by side.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Did you rehearse that?”

  She shrugged, and did her usual finger twiddle in her lap.

  “Might have done. A bit.”

  I smirked, because she was incredible. A stunning girl, with a stunning mind, and a stunning heart to match.

 
; She smirked along with me, then took a breath.

  “She really did understand things, Logan. She did.”

  “She understood the things she knew,” I said. “But there was plenty my mum didn’t know. About me.”

  “So let me know then,” she whispered. “Let me understand.”

  Again, it would have been such a relief. Such a weight off my shoulders to come crashing down, shared with the woman I love. Unfortunately, a problem shared is a problem halved, and Chloe’s gorgeous shoulders were far too young, and far too happy to take on half of my burden.

  I imagine my eyes must have hardened as the walls came back up around my heart. I imagine she must have seen it a clear mile away, how I tensed up to ice coldness beside her on the bed.

  “Don’t,” she said, but it was too late.

  I was too late.

  I was still feeling sick, grief slamming to my core as I pulled myself up from the bed and put on my dressing gown. I headed out onto the landing, being careful not to even glance at Mum’s open bedroom before I took the stairs down, two steps at a time.

  Chloe was in my shirt when she joined me in the kitchen, a familiar sight, and one I’d remember forever. What little of forever there was left.

  “This isn’t right for me,” I told her, forcing out my words.

  I was trying my best to keep it cool, my veneer of strength rising up enough to keep me steady, even though my insides were spaghetti.

  “What isn’t right for you?” she asked.

  I flicked the kettle on to boil, knowing full well I wasn’t up to drinking coffee, but needing the break in her stare.

  “We aren’t,” I said. “I love you, and I’m grateful, but us being together… that’s no future, Chloe.”

  “Stop it,” she said, and this time there was an edge to her voice I hadn’t ever heard before. Frustration. I felt it too. Only mine was directed like a mirror, right back onto myself. “I mean it, Logan. I told your mum and I’m telling you. I’m not going anywhere. I want to be here. With you.”

  I knew it then – seeing her so firm in her resolve – that there was no way I could ever make her see sense for her future. She’d never walk away, not if she knew the real reason I was so keen to push her from my side. So, I didn’t reason with her. I sucked myself in and pushed myself on, for her sake and not for mine.