Page 92 of Don't Let Me Go
“Reliving?” I can’t help laughing. “What? You mean like a past life?”
Riley lifts his head off my chest and looks into my eyes. “Yeah.”
I want to laugh again, but something in Riley’s expression stops me. “You’re serious?”
“I know. It’s crazy,” he concedes. “But think about it. Ever since we met, we’ve had this connection, right? At the time, I thought it was just a really intense crush. But maybe it’s something more. Maybe we feel like we’ve known each other forever because...”
“Because?”
“Because we have.”
Riley holds my gaze, his piercing green eyes practically daring me to tell him he’s wrong. But he has to be wrong. What he’s suggesting is impossible.
“That’s a really sweet idea,” I begin, trying to select my words carefully so as not to hurt his feelings.
“But?”
“But past lives? That’s kind of a stretch, isn’t it? I mean, you said you wrote a paper on Pompeii for school, right? And I’ve watched literally every movie there is about World War Two. It makes sense that stuff would bleed over into our dreams.”
“I’ve never heard of Brattahlid,” Riley counters. “Or that other place, the one in Iceland.”
“Húsavík.”
“Húsavík! Exactly. I wouldn’t even know how to spell that. But Irememberit. I remember the farm we grew up on. I remember the taste of the porridge that your mother used to make. I remember the smell of burning houses when the village was destroyed. At least...” Riley sighs in frustration. “At least IthinkI do.”
To my surprise, I find myself nodding in agreement. Because as much as I’d like to deny it, I remember those things too. All of them. And that shouldn’t be possible.
“Okay, so what exactly are you suggesting?” I ask as my resistance to his theory begins to waver. “That we knew each other in a past life?Multiplepast lives? And, what, we keep getting reincarnated?”
Riley falls into a thoughtful silence. “Do you remember what that witch said when we were being banished? She said, ‘When one song ends, another always begins.’?”
“And you thinkwe’rethe song?”
“Maybe.”
I shake my head. I can’t believe I’m even considering this. “But why us? What makes us special?”
“I don’t know. Maybe we’re just—” Riley stops himself and blushes.
“Maybe we’re just what?”
“Soulmates.”
The word surprises me. I wasn’t expecting it. And yet as soon as I hear it, something about it sounds undeniablyright.
“I know that’s a bit intense,” Riley confesses with a shy smile. “But honestly, that’s how I feel about you, Jackson. Before you moved to Orlando, my life was—I don’t know how to describe it. It just felt?.?.?.?wrong.”
“What do you mean, ‘wrong’?”
“I don’t know. Everything just feltoff. Like something was missing. Or incomplete. It was like?.?.?.?like that video I sent you, the one about the kid who was color-blind. Do you remember? He could see fine, but everything was brown and gray.”
I nod. “I remember.”
“That’s what my life was like. It was fine but colorless. Only I didn’t know it was colorless until you came along. Then suddenly, everywhere I looked there were rainbows. Which is such a fucking gay thing to say. But it’s true. You filled my world with color, Jackson. You made everything feel alive. You mademefeel alive. It was like, being withyou, I was finally living the life I was supposed to lead. If that’s not a soulmate, I don’t know what it is.”
Riley’s words leave me speechless. Everything he’s saying about the way I make him feel, I understand. More than he knows.
“Sorry,” he says, withdrawing into himself. “That was a lot. I shouldn’t have—”
