Page 109 of Ghost Ribbon

“Just…” He swallowed hard and tried again. “Don’t say it. I… I can’t do this.”

Then he ran.

He moved so fast I was caught in a freeze, my body refusing to process what my eyes were seeing. One moment he was there, crying, his hand still warm where it had pressed against my lips. The next he was gone, a small dark shape flying down the hill, his ribbon slipping loose from his curls and his bare feet barely making sound against the dry grass.

I stood alone on the hill with half a word still dying in my throat.

Then I ran after him.

The sky split open.

Rain came down, soaking through my shirt in seconds. It turned the ground treacherous. I could see Marco ahead of me, still running, his smaller frame cutting through the downpour. His outline blurred at the edges, becoming less a person and more a suggestion of one, a ghost I was desperately trying not to lose.

“Marco!”

He reached his house ahead of me. He threw himself at the door, fumbled with the handle, and slipped inside.

I arrived two seconds later.

The door shut in my face.

I stood on his front step, rain streaming down my face, my hair plastered to my skull, my chest heaving. The wood was old and worn beneath my palm. I could feel the vibration of him on the other side. He was right there. Close enough to touch if the world would only permit it.

“Marco,” I said.

No response.

“Open the door.”

Nothing.

I pressed my hand flat against the wood.

“Is…” The word came out barely formed. I had to force the rest through a throat that felt like it had been filled with broken glass. “Is being loved by me such a tragedy?”

“No. But loving me is.”

How could he say that?

“Marco,” my voice broke. “Talk to me. Let me in. Don’t make me break this door. I don’t want to use force all the time. But I will break it if you try to shut me out.”

The rain hammered against my shoulders, against the earth.

“I’m sick.”

I stopped breathing.

My heart lunged inside my chest. I felt a convulsion that made my vision spark at the edges. Sick. The word landed like a stone in still water, sending ripples outward through everything I thought I knew.

For one stupid second, I wanted to ask if he had a cold.

A fever.

Something temporary and trivial and easily fixed.

But I was thrown backward, violently, to that night in Italy.

The small boy under the lemon tree with a hospital needle hidden in his pocket. The bruise at his elbow. The way his breathing had seemed labored even sitting still. My body is bad sometimes. The words he had spoken years ago or five minutes ago - I could no longer tell the difference.