Page 46 of Meet Me in the Stars

“I thought it would take more than that to get him to eat it,” Elio said.

My heart skipped a beat and lodged up into my throat just behind the growing fireball. My vision was gone, but my ears still worked.

“I didn’t,” Tritus said. “He wants to know.”

“I want him to know ---”

Their voices faded away and the sunlight burnt the back of my head. Sunlight? In the cave?

“Freddie,” Lotus’s voice reached my ears and wrapped around me.

Maybe it wasn’t so bad to die like this – to be poisoned by a guy masquerading as my mate. Maybe it wasn’t bad at all if her voice was the last thing my dying brain hallucinated.

“Freddie,” Lotus said again. “Open your eyes!”

Her laughter spread over me like a warm blanket. Dead men didn’t open their eyes of course. They were sealed shut and covered with---

“Open your eyes!” Her voice was still amused, but insistent.

“Dead.”

“You’re not dead. I’m dead. He’s dead. You’re not,” Lotus said.

“How are you here?” I sat up rubbing my eyes.

“You’re here,” Lotus said, pointing down at the grass.

She was as beautiful as ever. Whatever Vulpine Degenerative disease took from her; the Other World returned with interest. I reached out for her, half expecting my hand to pass through her flesh. She was solid. My Lotus was solid! I stood and pulled her into my arms. She laughed and nuzzled against my chest.

“There’s someone I need you to meet,” Lotus said. “Someone I knew a long time ago back when I was a dragon.”

“If one of the glitter bunnies snuck in and gave me something while I was asle---”

“Don’t worry. Duke and Teddy are guarding you well, Fred. You’re not high. You’re not dead. You’re just conked out,” Lotus said. “But I was a dragon before. Which makes so much sense. Also, it makes sense that I wanted to be an adorable little fox for a while. Anyway. We don’t know how long we have to get this done. So you better meet ---” She said his name but my brain didn’t wrap around it.

I almost asked her to repeat it, but she practically shoved the guy whose face was murky in my memory against me. Elio! His scent wrapped around me as it had that first day when I stepped off the Medwin 2. He had known Lotus. I wasn’t conked out – I was --- I was tripping on caramel?

“Elio!” I said the name, but the sound didn’t come out of my mouth.

The trip apparently wasn’t interactive. I lost track of time both back then and on the candy trip. The three of us talked the universe in circles in more words and thoughts that my waking mind would ever be able to process. Then he was one of us. It was as if Elio’s memory of how we actually made that work couldn’t be stored or my brain couldn’t make it work. But Elio smelled like us and we smelled a bit more like him. His thoughts flowed through me and through Lotus adding him in like a new line on a circuit breaker. He’d told the truth, but that didn’t get either of us any closer to having Lotus back.

“I love you, sleepyhead,” Lotus whispered as the memory faded and sleep – real, solid sleep overtook me.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Elio

I tucked Fred in under a thick blanket on the sofa. These things took time. I slept for two days after eating my memory. Sure, he probably wasn’t as tired as I was because he recently slept almost forty freaking years, but I did my best to be patient. Mostly, I just wanted him to know without a doubt that we were mates. We were true-mates the same way everyone became true-mates. We chose each other.

Tritus returned to the service desk, and I paced the tiny cavern in front of the sofa where he slept. I knew what he was seeing or at least how my brain processed it. I was warned by the guide that fed me that living brains processed things differently and some of the details would probably be fuzzy. Fred would’ve gotten the same treatment and speech if only he hadn’t scarfed up the candy. If he would’ve told me he was that damn hungry, I would’ve asked Tritus to bring out a snack before the memory candy.

I paced until my feet hurt and my knees tingled numb. Then I stretched out on my belly on the cavern floor and thought about what Fred might be seeing. I wondered if he were still in the memory or if he was asleep now. Turning my face, I pressed my cheek against my arm and watched him sleep. We hadn’t known each other for a full week yet, but everything had changed. Everything hung on this memory and on if he believed that it was a memory. Being so far from him made me ache. I crawled across the floor and pressed my cheek just over his heart. It beat in a gentle rhythm that I guessed meant he was probably asleep now. That wasn’t close enough either. Despite our exchanging of the claiming vows, it still seemed I couldn’t get close enough to him. I climbed onto the sofa and stretched out on top of him with my head resting over his star. I traced the outline of it through his shirt and his arm wrapped around me. I tensed, afraid I’d woken him, but he was still asleep. I bit my lip to hold back a happy sigh. That had to be a good sign, right? Even in his sleep, he moved toward me. He wanted me as close as I wanted him. I let my thoughts carry me away and I slept for a while until my growling belly woke me.

I kissed Fred on the cheek. He was still out cold. I tiptoed back into the cavern with the reception desk to ask for a snack and to find out how long I’d been out cold with him. Tritus still sat behind the desk. So I couldn’t have slept that long.

“Did you have a good rest?” he asked, looking up from whatever he was playing with on his phone.

“How long was I out?”

---