Page 66 of Prometheus Burning

“I told you I loved another girl.”

“At least you were honest.”

“I was stupid. Not honest. There’s a difference.”

I bit my lip, uncertain of how to phrase all the different emotions going through my mind. What was it I was even feeling? Sadness? Emptiness for all that could have been? Wonder over being in this spiritual dimension?

Disbelief in the words Jamie now told me?

After all, how could I believe all the good things Jamie said when I had so many memories of the bad? Here I was, in this magical, crazy place—unsure of how any of this was even possible—and all I could think was of all that had been between me and a boy who I’d barely known.

“You know what I regret the most?” I asked. “How abruptly things ended between us.”

“Me too.” He cleared his throat awkwardly.

“Maybe… if we’d stayed in each other’s lives… maybe you’d still be alive.”

“Iamalive, Jemma. More so than I’ve ever been.”

I am alive, I repeated in my mind.

The weight of his words fell heavily against my chest as deeply as the red and orange lanterns dancing across an otherwise dark sky.

Jamie’s alive.

I’m alive.

No one ever dies.

Chapter Forty-One

Alive

I am alive.

Jamie’s words were still bouncing through my mind when the boat slowed.

A house on a hill with many lights stood tall in the night sky, amidst the lanterns that hung high above. The waterway narrowed, and we continued upward, advancing upstream as the oars continued to paddle. Like moving upstream was such a natural thing.

The home on the hill came into better focus, and I noticed a two-story structure with a stone front, illuminated by the lights which lined the narrow stream we’d entered.

“Some driveway, huh?” I asked. “No. Seriously. This is… I don’t even know.”

In response, Jamie smiled the most genuinely happy expression I’d ever seen come from his lips.

At the very top of the hill, where the waterway narrowed into a tiny point and ended, the boat came to an abrupt stop, gently bumping against one of the rocks which lined the perimeter of the home. Jamie placed a supportive hand around my arm, then stood, and hopped over the side of the rocks. He landed on the grassy area, on the other side of the stones, and leaned back in over the boat toward me.

He came close, looking down at me intensely. I instinctively reached for his arms from the boat, and he pulled me over, onto the grass, to join him. On the other side of the rocks, we froze, no longer moving, his nose grazing mine. I inhaled, trying so hard to push away the warmth floating through my body. The truth of the matter though was that I couldn’t contain the bubbly, loving emotion that consumed me every single time he looked at me or touched me.

His eyes glowed with a fervor I had never seen before.

“Jemma… do you remember the other day… when I told you I go home?” he asked. “Well, this isalmosthome for me now. At least, it will be home. One day. My house beyond the physical world.”

“Almost home?” The words escaped in a murmur, leaving me breathless. But I wasn’t looking at the house at all. My eyes remained on Jamie whose lips half-curled into a smile.

“Almost home,” he whispered, guiding me along a stony pathway which led to the front door. The way he said the words, I wasn’t sure if he meant that we were literally almost home—or if he meant that the home wasn’t quite his own yet.

“A little bit of both,” he whispered.

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