Author's Notes…

Only a couple chapters/epilogue left! Thanks for the support so far! We're almost there, guys!


How to Save a Life

Chapter Nine

The Secret

Do you see what I see,

A star, a star,

Dancing in the night

December 23

Rey woke up to an empty bed, but the smell of frying breakfast items rose through to the second floor. She sat up and shoved her fingers into her knotted hair and debated on a shower. She was pretty dirty from the night before, and judging by the faint scent of soap lingering in the air, Ben himself had washed off.

She wrapped the blanket around her and almost hopped into the bathroom. The hardwood floor was so cold it actually hurt her feet to touch it. She got the shower going, her teeth chattering

as she rubbed at her arms to circulate some warmth.

Steam wafted through the bathroom. It was the declaration Rey needed that it was now safe to abandon her only source of warmth. She slid into the hot spray of water and groaned in relief. It was so bloody cold!

As the water sluiced down her body, she looked around and realized only Ben's products were in here. It was too late to go get her own things—there was no way she was shutting off the shower and going to retrieve them. She'd be in an ice cube in seconds. There was no other choice, then. She'd have to use his shampoo and conditioner.

The thought brought a smile. She liked how Ben smelled. This would be pleasant.

A rapping of knuckles hit the door.

"Yes?" Rey called, having barely made it out.

Ben's voice was muffled.

"Just open the door!"

He did so, and his cheeks were a bit red. He wouldn't look directly at her naked body, which she found somewhat hilarious. She told him so, and he rolled his eyes, his shyness evaporating instantly.

"I came here to say breakfast is ready," he drawled.

"What'd you make?" she asked, reluctant for him to leave just yet.

He braced a shoulder against the threshold of the door and folded his arms. Now that they'd gotten the teasing out of the way, he was making no effort to control his direct gaze at her body. It warmed her inside. She didn't think anyone who he looked at like that would be unaffected.

He was utterly fit, Ben Solo.

"It's a surprise," he said.

Intrigued, she laughed. "All right. I'll be down soon."


Have a holly, jolly Christmas,

It's the best time of the year,

I don't know if there'll be snow,

But have a cup of cheer

"Oh, my gosh, it's precious!" Rey put her hands to either side of her face, her jaw dropping.

Ben blushed and mumbled something, sitting down at the dining table.

"I almost don't want to eat it," she said, following suit. She gazed at her food for a moment longer. "But I'm so hungry."

"Eat," Ben said. He picked up a piece of toast and smothered it in strawberry jam.

He'd made her breakfast in the shape of a reindeer.

There were four slices of pancakes—two shaped like ears, one like a nose, one for the base of the face. Two pieces of bacon stuck up from under the bottom pancake for "antlers." For the reindeer's nose, there was a dollop of whipped cream with a raspberry pressed into it.

"It's so cute," she breathed again.

Ben rolled his eyes. "It's not. Just eat, okay?" he grumbled.

"Look, dear, sir, you cannot make me something this fabulous and adorable and then expect me not to make a comment on it," Rey replied, amused. "Admit it, Ben Solo: you're a softy."

"Never," he said around a bite of toast. He aimed the toast at her reindeer without raising his eyes. "Eat. You should recover from all the fucking we did last night."

Sometimes, Rey still wasn't braced for his crassness. She blushed herself, and then flicked her raspberry at him.

"What, woman! Stop!"

"You're lucky!" Rey informed him, grasping her glass of orange juice. "I can't risk anything else of Rudolph. I don't like raspberries, but the rest looks delicious."

"Oh, yes," he said wryly. "I am so lucky."

"Oh, don't be so grumpy," Rey said, her foot finding his under the table. She nudged her slipper-ed toes against his shoe. The man was dressed already. Rey had opted for her pajamas. It was a lazy, snowy day, and they hadn't planned to go anywhere.

"So don't be myself?" He examined a buttered bit of toast.

Rey shook her head at him, digging her fork into the nose portion of the pancake. Her free hand poured the syrup. It was maple and expensive. But everything here was expensive. It was a luxury cabin through and through, yet someone in his family had made it so homey.

"You know that's not what I meant," she said. She hesitated, seeing as how he hadn't returned to eating. "You… don't want to pretend the night before didn't happen, do you…?" Dread was an ice block in her stomach.

"No!" he said loudly. Fear crossed his features. "…Do you?"

"No!" she said empathically. "Not at all. I—I just wanted to be sure. Going forward… you—you said you love me…"

"You said you love me back," he murmured, his lashes low.

"I did," she whispered.

"And nothing's changed?" He set his toast down.

"No," she said steadily, all the while hiding her shaking her hands between her thighs. Nothing had changed, no. That didn't mean she wasn't extremely nervous. The battle was in not letting it show. "But…"

His shoulders tensed.

"…I do think we should discuss how quickly things are moving."

"…That's probably wise," he muttered.

"I just want to be sure that you… that this is really what you want," she urged herself to say. His eyes predictably flashed her way, and she reached over the table and grasped his hand. "I want this," she clarified.

"I do, too," he murmured.

"And that's the other thing…" she hedged. "What, exactly, is this?"

"Does it need a title?" he asked.

"No," she replied. "Well, yes. I—I don't know. Maybe before that, we should… also… really talk about last night—"

He got up with his dirty plates and utensils.

Damn it all to hell.

"Ben, please?" she begged him. "We really, really should. If you love me, and we're going forward with this, then I need to know the truth. And before we even came here, I said we would share each other's darkest secrets, remember?"

The dishes hit the sink a little too hard, porcelain chattering against itself, taking the fork and knife with it. Rey winced, hoping nothing had broken.

Ben wiped his hand off on a dish towel and sighed. He kept his back to her. She watched the way the rays of light melting the snow on the window played over his hair. It gave it a silky sheen as it highlighted the raven locks. Rey could envision her fingers soothing through them. They had last night, when Ben and Rey were tangled up together on the bed. He'd fallen asleep quickly after that.

"I think you know it," he said.

Rey wet her lips, unsure. Did he mean about feeling suicidal? Because there was no earthly way she'd know about what had happened to his siblings…

"I think—perhaps I only know part of it," she said slowly. "I saw the scars on your wrists…"

"Those were from a long time ago." He pushed the faucet on to start washing dishes, flinging the dish towel over his shoulder. "But… yeah."

Rey opened her mouth to speak, to say she knew it was more than that. It was lost over the sound of the dishwasher opening and the clatter of plates going into it. She took a moment to think of how to word what she wanted to say.

"I never felt alive anymore," he said over the sound of the chore. It seemed easiest for him to be open with her when he wasn't looking at her. She understood that, especially with something this delicate in nature. "…Not until I saw you standing there in that ugly sweater with those… ridiculous antlers."

Rey snorted a giggle, covering her face with a hand to hide it.

"It… It breathed life into me," Ben said. "I've been… holding onto that feeling."

Her giggle fading, she lowered her eyes to the table. "Do you want my help?" she asked for the second time. Last night had not produced good results. Regardless, she had to try again. They were running out of time.

He waited until he'd finished with the dishes to return to the table. He sat on his stool with one thigh up, the other down. His hands were fisted loosely in his lap. He spun the stool slightly as he talked, his eyes on the morning sun breaking through the clouds.

"I do," he said. "I… didn't react well last night. But…" He exhaled. "You're right. You should know."

"It's not that I should know," she said imploringly. "It's for you—to rid yourself of some of your burden."

He snorted, and she colored.

"However you want to look at it," he said. His eyes wandered her way, drank in her expression. He sighed again and inclined his head at her. "Fine. You're right. I need to… relieve my burdens."

Mollified, Rey nodded.

Ben dragged his fingers into his hair and fisted them there. His other hand dallied along his knees, fingers tapping. Rey waited patiently. He was figuring out how to start the story. She knew it was hard enough for him to tell her at all.

Progress, she thought faintly.

"I… I had a brother and a sister," he said. "We were—triplets, actually."

"Triplets?" Rey parroted, her brows rising. That, she had not expected.

"Yeah…" His fingers migrated to the table to tap there instead. He rolled his shoulders—his muscles were pinched with fresh tension. "Jacen and Jaina. Me. I was… born first. Jacen next, then Jaina."

Rey pushed her plate aside and folded her arms on the table. Her chin dipped to rest on her forearms.

"We did everything together. When we were eight…" His voice choked, and he didn't speak again for a long time. "…When we were eight, we were… at another cabin. We wanted to go exploring. It was my idea, actually."

Rey bit her lip.

"I had found a pond frozen over, and we had our skates for an official rink. I knew if… Dad found out that we wanted to go skating on our own, like a bunch of fucking idiots, he would have said no. I…" He wet his lips, his eyes growing haunted. "I wish I had asked him." A fine tremor ran through the words.

"Then what happened?" Rey prompted softly.

"…We wanted to go out, and he said not to go very far. He said I was in charge. He… did this stupid salute thing he does with two fingers—looking like a smug son of a bitch… Then he walked off, and the second he was out of sight, we were off."

His gaze grew distant, seeing things she couldn't in the passage of time. "I'm sure you can guess where this is going. We went out onto the pond. The ice at the edges held firm. I wanted to go to the center. Jacen thought it'd be fun, too, but Jaina was against it."

Ben grasped the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes. "We insisted, so she came with us. I wanted to race—we said Jaina could be the judge of who won, but she wanted to race, too." A brief grin turned the corners of his mouth up. "She never wanted to be excluded. She had to be with us everywhere."

"You were triplets," Rey murmured.

"Yeah…" He swallowed so hard she could see his throat working. "So… we raced. We pushed off at once. I got ahead, and I heard this… this cracking sound. I'm not—I don't really know what, exactly, saved me."

"What do you mean?" she frowned.

"I should have—" The words died fast. He started over. "One second…" His voice trembled. "One second, I was just ahead of Jacen, and the next I was out of danger."

"Out of danger?" Rey sat up a little more.

"The ice had cracked," he breathed. "Jacen and Jaina went under. They were screaming—they couldn't get out of the water. I think because it was too cold, I don't know."

Rey was fixated. The pain on his face was so stark.

"I tried to get to them…" He blinked, and a few tears escaped. He lowered his head to hide them. "I did get to them. I got them out, but it took a while. The ice was fucking slippery, and the water was making it worse, and…"

She barely dared to breathe.

"I got them out," he reiterated. "But, in the end, it didn't fucking matter. They were gone."

"Gone?" Rey repeated.

"Yeah. By the time I got them home, they had…"

"Hypothermia?"

"No. I mean, close. But—no, it was cold shock. We were eight, and the water had to be below freezing. I've researched it over and over—what I could have done, but…" A bitter laugh escaped him. "There's really not much."

"It's not your fault," Rey said.

"I know it's not my fault," he said, nodding. "But, uh…" He played with the syrup bottle. "I never told my dad I was sorry. He stood there, and he kept screaming over and over that he had left me in charge, and I… I got so angry. It wasn't my fault. It was the only thing that was keeping me sane. I had not killed my brother and sister."

Rey didn't need to tell him that he hadn't.

"But my father was so close to Jaina… She was kind of sickly growing up. That's why she fought so hard to stay with us, to do the things we did. She was always pushing herself."

"Is it too late to talk to him about it now?" she whispered.

"My mom says it's not." He shrugged his shoulders at her. "I don't fucking believe it, though." He leaned back on his stool, his head dangling over the edge, exposing the column of his throat. "She's right. We don't know how to communicate, and that started before everything went to shit."

"Ben… I love you." She got up from the table so she could stand before him. She cupped his cheeks in her hands. She had to lean a little over him to see him with his head arched like that.

"I love you, too," he said quietly.

"I'm not saying it will fix things… maybe it won't," she said.

"Fuck, you're going to make us go there for Christmas, aren't you?"

Her silence was telling.

"Fuck," he said again.

"It'll help—"

"Yeah, yeah, fucking yeah," he grumbled. He slid off the stool with a long-suffering sigh.

"Full of love for the f-word today," she observed.

"It's my fucking favorite," he said to make her smile. It worked. "…How do you want me to introduce you to them?"

Rey liked that he hadn't questioned bringing her, that it was assumed she was going. "How do you want to?"

"I… don't ask me that," he told her.

"Why not?"

"Because I'm crazy, and I know what I want, and you're… you're not ready for it. Might not ever be. So… you pick."

"Well, now you've got me intrigued," she protested. "Come on, you can tell me. I promise it won't scare me away."

"Come as my wife," he said seriously.

"Ben," she breathed. White noise clouded her ears.

"See, I told you," he replied.

"I—" She had to search her feelings. What did she want, when the pressure to keep him alive was taken away? The answer truly scared her. But they'd come so far in such a short amount of time… "I'll go as your fiancé." She cleared her throat. "I want a big wedding."

He smiled so brightly it made her heart stop—it made her memorize every single detail of it. She wasn't sure if she'd ever see it again.

"Let's pick out a ring," he said.

"Just let me change." Trying to meet his smile with one of her own, she kissed his cheek and gripped his hand in passing. "I won't be long."

A ring. A ring.

Holy shite.

She closed the door to her bedroom and placed a hand to her chest. Her heart wanted to escape, so she found it prudent to ensure it didn't.

"It's all right," a soft voice said from the corner. She whirled to find Ben's grandmother. "I know it seems quick."

"It is," Rey whispered.

"I married Ani after two weeks," the guardian angel said. Her expression was a fond one.

"So this isn't too fast?" Rey questioned.

"If you know, you know," the other woman told her. She shimmered, preparing to disappear. "Do you know…?"

Aaaand… she was gone.

Fan-fucking-tastic.

Rey looked over her shoulder at her closed door, and more importantly, the man beyond it.

Did she know?

She squeezed her eyes shut. She again made herself take away everything except the simple fact of how they felt for one another. And when there was only that, the core of their love, nothing seemed too fast, too impossible.

Everything was… right.

Rey smiled and got dressed.

It was time to pick out a ring. And then? To see his parents!

She only hoped it wouldn't be an utter disaster.