| Woven by Kellyann Zuzulo |
true then. The cancer had taken me. So soon. I
thought I had time.
I felt alive. I turned my face to Kevin. He was so
close that my vision filled with the blue of his eyes.
I shifted my gaze back to Kevin. “But-but . . . Why
am I here?”
“You are alive.” As though to prove it, he tilted his
head and kissed me.
He cocked his head. “I think you know that, too.”
A thrill shot through me. His lips were firm and
pliant, soft and moist. My heartbeat pounded
straight down to a warm spot deep in my belly.
I wound my arm around his back and up to his
neck. My fingers played with the silky c urls on his
collar. I certainly felt alive . . . and about to explode
with a new excitement that I’d never felt before.
I felt giddy and odd and confused. But I wasn’t
afraid. I wanted to laugh. “Are you haunting me?”
A strange sense of resignation, like exhaustion
after a hard workout, settled over me.
“Not haunting, Maggie. I came to meet you.”
I swept my hand across my brow. It was cool.
Surprisingly, I didn’t feel nauseated or sweaty,
only bewildered. The pain in my back was most
definitely gone.
I looked down where our thighs touched. At some
point, my hand had found his. Our fingers were
entwined. I looked up to find Kevin’s gaze. “What
about the white light? The tunnel?”
I’d been so enchanted by his eyes that I hadn’t
noticed before how smooth his skin was, alabaster
in texture, without the blemish of a pore or the
shading of a beard. He appeared as flawless as a
marble bust of himself, yet alive.
I exhaled, wondering at the robust sound of my
heavy sigh. “Why am I still breathing?”
Kevin’s hand that had been on my shoulder
moved to rub my back. I leaned into him. “It’s like
muscle memory. You’re not actually breathing.
Your mind is restructuring an imitation of what it is
to breathe, to give you time to catch up to what’s
actually happened. That’s one of the reasons
I wanted to get you inside quickly. Your breath
was no longer clouding in the air. You might have
noticed.”
I puckered my lips and blew out, pushing and then
pulling air from my lungs. My chest rose and fell.
108 | www.BTSeMag.com
He pulled back from me, smiling. “It’s just a
different type of living. You’ve moved on to the
next level of your existence.”
I played with the soft nest of wool in my lap. “And
the blanket. How—”
“It represents the life you wove for yourself, but it
holds a promise, too. That what you find here will
be bigger and better. That you will find peace.”
I peered up at him through the shadow of his
lashes. “And you? You’re—”
“With you.” He bent his neck so that his lips were
by my ear. “I’ve thought about you often in the
time that I’ve been here.”
I eased back to stare at him.
He smiled again. “A car accident, two years ago.
It was instant. Like you, I didn’t know anyone who
had died, so there was nobody who I knew to
meet me. But there were others. And they made
me feel welcome. But when I realized what was
happening to you, I asked to be the one.”
“To meet me?”
“Yes. And to stay with you. For a while . . . if you
want.”