Page 146 of White Lights
How does she get out of here? How can she help herself? What would someone who loves her tell her to do?
She knows Moriah still has Asher’s halo, wisely suspecting Dez would dive back in for it the next chance she got. But the director might not know about Asher’s Lifeline, about the secret moment Dez spliced inside it.
She pulls it up now. It’s been less than a day since she looked at the scene she modified of the two of them on the beach. But everything has changed. Dez is not afraid of getting caught anymore. She doesn’t care if she messes with the Vault in some irreversible way.
She has no fear. Nothing to lose.
She finds the scene and almost breaks at the beauty of it. The way Asher sees her walking toward him. In his eyes, she looks like the heroine in a love story wearing her blue sweatshirt with the white hibiscus embroidered on the sleeve. She wishes she could see him, his face—not just see the world as he sees it. But looking at herself through his point of view will have to be enough for now.
She feels highlighted by Asher, accepted and desired. She can hear his heartbeat pick up, and the sound of his breath at the sight of her. She could watch this moment every second for the rest of her life. When he opens his arms, she feels herself inside of them. When he tucks his head to hers, she knows she’s safe. Maybe not now, but in another realm. A realm as real as this one, where she and Asher are together.
Yesterday, there was nothing to the scene beyond her embrace with Asher. It was gorgeous, and natural, and then it was over. His Lifeline moved on to another scene.
Today, somehow, there’s more.
The scene has taken on a life of its own.
Inside her Lens, Asher is speaking. He sounds genuinely amazed. “I thought I’d never see you again.”
The Dez on-screen is quiet. The Dez in the Vault waits too long for the Dez on-screen to speak. Asher’s waiting, too.
“I decided to take matters into my own hands,” Dez finally says aloud in the Vault, like she’s feeding herself a line.
And then, on-screen—
Her likeness mirrors her words, speaking with the exact same inflection, the exact same timing and flirtatiousness. In the Vault, Dez sucks in her breath. She can talk to him. She can speak to him all the way from here.
What else can she do? Can she kiss him? She laughs. In spite of every awful thing going on outside this Lens, in here, all she wants to do is close the distance to the man before her. She wills the version of herself on the beach to look up into his eyes, to let her gaze linger on his lips, to step in and go for it already.
Nothing.
She reaches forward, trying to physically manipulate her on-screen likeness. There’s something essential in this untested kiss that Dez needs to know. It isn’t only physical, not like the way she felt with Rafe.
It’sexistential, as if somehow, everything depends on if and how they kiss.
But the Dez on the beach can’t be moved into action the way she can be moved into speaking. Dez practically tears at the screen, her heart pounding with exertion. Nothing happens. Nothing works.
Finally, from the Vault, she says, “Asher, would you do me a favor?”
Her likeness on the beach repeats the request.
“Anything.” Asher smiles.
“Kiss me. Like it’s the last thing you’ll ever get to do.”
Through the Lens, Dez experiences him studying her. It’s her face she can see, her open desire and vulnerability. She feels him stepping forward, taking a hitched breath, then wrapping his arms around the Dez on the beach. He pulls her up and into him.
Then his lips crash into hers like waves.
When he closes his eyes, it’s not that Dez stops seeing so much as she begins to feel what he’s feeling inside of her own body. And it’s not only the physicality of the kiss. It’s the singularity, the sense that this kiss could happen between no other two people in the world. Just them. Only them.
When Asher opens his eyes, Dez sees herself through his gaze—every fleck of light in her blue irises, every hint of longing in her lips. And the recognition she feels? It’s as if, at last, someone is seeing her precisely as she longs to be seen. It’s soul-expanding, life-affirming. Death-defying.
It’s a kiss that will change her forever, even standing breathless in the Vault a thousand miles away.
Dez has never known anything like this. It’s all there—everythingthat matters most is there—in Asher’s kiss.
If only it could happen in the real world. If only she had a way to see him again.
