Page 208 of Phantom Mine

“Then what’s with all of the cloak and dagger stuff? I feel like I’m about to be inducted into a secret cult or something.”

A low laugh rumbles in his chest before he points towards the glass doors. “The surprise is waiting for you in the backyard.”

I frown. “You’re not coming?”

Matteo shakes his head. “You don’t need me for this.”

Confusion pulls at my brow but Matteo encourages me forward with a tip of his chin and gentle pressure at my back.

“It’s not my place,cara. Go on without me.”

With one last unsure look at him, I head unhurriedly for the doors and pull them open.

They give way into an expansive backyard full of blooming flowers and overlapping colors. It’s like stepping into another world—the air hums with life, the flowers dance in the soft breeze, the colors explode around me.

Not too far away from me, there’s a woman. She’s crouched and turned away, up to her elbows in dirt as she rips roots out of the ground.

She stands, her back still to me, and her hair cascades out of the crook of her neck and down her back in rich, luscious curls.

I freeze, a momentarily unmoving statue as time keeps ticking around me.

My eyes lock on those curls, my breathing caught somewhere between panic and disbelief as I try to make sense of the impossible sight before me.

She turns and it’s as if I’ve been hit in the chest with a hammer. The air turns to stone in my lungs. A wave of emotion hits me. I want to speak, to scream her name at the top of my lungs, but nothing comes.

Lightheadedness slams into me and I cling to the door frame for support as I lay eyes on a face I wasn’t sure I’d ever see again.

I take a step forward, then another, stumbling, unsteady on my feet, my legs weak. My whole body seems to move without me, teetering precariously, intoxicated by longing.

It can’t be.

I don’t dare hope that it is.

“Adri?”

Her name leaves my lips as a barely audible incredulous whisper, as if speaking any louder will wake me from this dream. My heart feels like a fragile origami bird, equally poised for liftoff and ready to be crushed by the cruel fist of reality.

But she’s still there and she’s looking at me with tears in her eyes, as alive as I remember her being.

“Leni?”

Two syllables shatter years of heartbreak and breathe new life into me.

A sob breaks past my lips, or maybe it's hers, and then we’re running towards each other and colliding in a shock of limbs and cries of joy.

Our arms are flung around each other, our hands and fingers desperately gripping for soft flesh like letting go might mean losing each other again. We hold on so tightly that it’s painful, but it’s the best kind of pain. My face is buried in her hair and I’m sucking in the familiar scent of her. Earthy and warm and addictive.

Finally, I pull back to make sure that it really is her, that this isn’t the cruelest type of trick. I find the Adri I know like I know every corner of my soul, except there’s a heaviness in her gaze that wasn’t there before.

Later. I’ll think about that later, because she’s real.

She’s really in my arms.

“You’re alive,” I exclaim. “You’realive.”

She chokes on a sob and nods and we’re both crying.

We hold each other in the middle of that garden until the sun goes down and the fireflies come out. For the first time in almost two years, I don’t see her in the sunset. I see her before me, against me, in my arms.

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