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I can’t speak, but my tears say everything that words can’t.
“I’m madly in love with you,” he goes on, “and I couldn’t go another minute without seeing you.”
Involuntarily I suck in a shuddering breath, tears streaming down my cheeks in rivulets. He draws his lips toward mine and kisses me deeply. I cry against his mouth, his tongue warm against mine, his hands cradling my head. The kiss is long and hard and passionate, both of us afraid to let go.
Luke holds me in his arms for a long time, just the two of us standing on the sidewalk outside my apartment building. I close my eyes and picture being back on the island with him. I picture the constant rain, us tangled in the hammock, me walking across his back, shaving his face, throwing mud at him. I picture surfing and hiking and the helicopter ride. I think of everything from the very second I saw him to the last moment we shared.
I never want to be without him again.
But a small detail still haunts me.
I pull away and look up at him with wet eyes.
“If you’re saying what I think you’re saying …” I begin. “Luke, you know you can’t change who you are for me. We talked about this, remember? I couldn’t live with myself knowing that you gave up an important part of your life for me.”
The smile around his eyes becomes warmer.
“But I didn’t give it up for you,” he says. “I gave it up because of you. Because you made me understand that as much as I loved BASE jumping, I realized I loved it because it was something I shared with my brother. After he died it became more a responsibility than an experience.” He takes my hand and we sit down together on the edge of the sidewalk, side by side with our knees bent and our feet flat on the blacktop of the parking lot. He reaches over and hooks his arm around my leg, our shoulders pressed together. “A part of me—the guilty part, I guess—made me feel like I needed to continue doing what Landon loved most. Because he couldn’t do it himself anymore.” He sighs and his arm tightens around my leg. His fingers begin brushing the skin around my ankle. “I actually decided not to jump before I left. I went on to Norway with everybody else, but only to make peace with my brother. After everybody jumped and I sat on that rock alone, eleven hundred feet above the ground, looking out at the clouds, I talked to him. On his birthday. Out loud.” He laughs lightly. “If I hadn’t been out there alone, somebody might’ve thought I was crazy.”
I smile inwardly, and he goes on.
“But I told him all of the things I never got to tell him before he died …
The air was brisk so high up where thin clouds hung in the blue-gray sky all around me. Everybody had already jumped. And they lived. A part of me, more noticeable than usual, was afraid they might not make it, that this would be the jump that killed one of my best friends the same way my brother was killed. But they lived and I was left alone on that rock, just me and the sky and my brother, who I knew was there, sitting next to me.
“I’m sorry,” I said as the wind blew through my hair. “I never got to tell you that I’m sorry for abandoning you. But you were right, Landon. You were always right.”
I looked out ahead of me, past the few trees on the back of the ledge and into the sky; my legs were drawn up on the rock, my ankles crisscrossed, my arms wrapped loosely about my knees, my back arched into a slouch.
“You were the most important thing in my life, little brother”—I swallowed hard—“I’m just sorry that I realized it too late and I hope you can forgive me.”
I choked back the tears, but then I just let them fall.
And then I smiled. I smiled because I knew that Landon forgave me. And then I laughed because I knew he was giving me shit.
“I met this girl,” I said. “I’ve never met anyone else like her, so full of life and passion and so sweet. I’m pretty sure I’m in love with her.” I looked over on my right as if looking right at Landon, as if he’d never died. “I’m pretty sure because I feel like I need her to breathe. Every day when I wake up in the morning, hers is the first face I see. And I feel like she took a part of me with her when she left, a part of me that I can’t function without.” I paused and looked into the sky. “And I need her back.”
Then I smiled and said, “You’ll always be my brother. But I have to let you go.”
I lean over and kiss Luke on the edge of his mouth and then reach up and wipe the tear away from his cheek. And then the one from my own.
“I’m glad you couldn’t wait any longer,” I say in a quiet voice, and then kiss the edge of his mouth again.
Luke pulls me into his lap and wraps his arms around me, holding me protectively against him; I can feel his heart beating rapidly against my chest—mine is beating so fast I feel slightly dizzy. His lips caress mine with so much passion that I forget everything else. Through his kiss I relive every moment I’ve ever spent with him. My fingers wind in his brown hair, and tears of happiness nearly choke me.
The kiss breaks and we sit quietly for a moment, me in his arms.
Then I stand up and grab his hands, elation running through my body, making my arms and legs and chest tingle—I can’t believe he’s here!
“Let’s go inside,” I tell him and pull him to his feet, but when he gets up, he grabs me and kisses me again, clutching my butt cheeks in his big hands and hoisting me up, my thighs latched around his waist.
I kiss his face all over: his cheeks, his nose, his forehead, his temples, his very willing lips.
“Which apartment is it?” he asks with a big smile as he carries me down the sidewalk toward the building.
I kiss his lips again, my arms draped over his shoulders.
“One fourteen,” I tell him. “How’d you know where I lived?”
