Page 71 of Seven Minutes
For a moment, neither of us breathed. Then he reached out, his fingers curling gently around my wrist, tugging me closer. The TV screen darkened with a screensaver. The ramen cooled on the table.
I leaned in. His breath mingled with mine. And when our lips met, it wasn’t desperate or unsure. It was familiar. Remembered. A bridge between what we’d lost and what we might still find. He stroked his tongue along mine as if making love to it. I swallowed his soft sigh. It shot straight to my dick, but I pushed the thought away.
When we pulled apart, he whispered, “You kept saying, ‘Don’t go.’ I could hear it as if you were right there.”
My heart squeezed. “I was.”
He nodded. “I know. I felt you pulling me back. I thought it would hurt to remember,” he murmured, “but it doesn’t. It feels… warm. Like it’s still happening somewhere.”
My chest ached. “Maybe it is.”
We sat there, quiet again. Finally, he whispered, “Tell me what it was like. From your side.”
I swallowed hard. “The accident?”
He nodded. “After, when they brought me in. When I—when you lost me.”
The words shredded through my heart like shrapnel. I hadn’t let myself go back there. Not really. I’d built walls of charts and schedules and pill bottles to keep it out. But now, with him looking at me like that—so brave and open—I couldn’t hide behind anything.
“I remember rushing into the bay and then freezing,” I said quietly. “The world just… tilted. Everything slowed down, but somehow I was moving too fast. It was your shoes I recognized first, then your face.”
Eli’s eyes glistened. I forced myself to keep going.
“I could hear them calling codes. I knew what it meant. I knew every step they were taking, and I couldn’t do a damn thing but stand there.” I clenched my hands together. “It was like being on the outside of my own nightmare. Watching through the glass.”
He shifted closer, his hand ghosting against my arm. I almost stopped, almost swallowed the words back down whereI’d been keeping them buried, but it was too late. They were already spilling out.
“It was… chaos. There was so much blood, Eli. I kept shouting at them, at you. They tried to stop. They were calling it—your time of death—and I just…” My voice broke, sharp and ugly, as hot tears blinded me. “I went fucking ballistic. I yelled at you not to leave me. All I remember was feeling like I was having a heart attack, the sound of blood pounding in my ears, and that monitor when it flatlined.”
I dragged in a breath, but it didn’t help. The memory was too vivid, burned into the back of my eyelids.
“I’ve heard that sound a thousand times,” I went on, voice low and shaking. “But it never affected me like that. Your flatline, though…” I gave a weak, broken laugh. “I don’t think I’ll ever stop hearing it. Like tinnitus or something.”
He blinked, tears slipping silently down his cheeks. “You brought me back,” he whispered thickly.
“I didn’t,” I said. “They did. The team?—”
“You did,” he insisted, reaching out and pressing his hand against my chest. “You never stopped calling me back.”
I looked down at his hand on me, warm, alive, and I let myself believe it. Maybe I had called him back. Maybe some part of him had heard me.
“Guess I was too damn stubborn to listen when you told me to rest,” he murmured, trying for a smile through the tears.
I huffed a shaky laugh, swiping at my own eyes. “You always were terrible at following orders.”
He leaned his head against my shoulder. It was the simplest contact in the world, and somehow, the bravest.
I let my hand rest over his, anchoring both of us there in that small, impossible moment where the world was quiet, and he was breathing.
“Maybe this is what the eighth minute feels like,” Eli murmured.
I smiled, brushing my thumb over his cheek. “Then let’s make it last.”
Chapter 29
Finding Solid Ground
ELI
