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Set directly after the last chapter. Told in Christian POV
"You can have that vomit to yourself darlin'. One AM, officially clocked off!"
I laugh with my best friend, she shuts the pub door, and another moment has passed in which I convince myself I am happy.
There are mornings now to which I wake where there is no ghost's smile waiting. Lids can open in the safety that he will not be there to keep me still. My hand does not reach out to skin for his touch, my nose does not drag sheets for his scent. Foolish heart, delusional head, they can face the truth.
He is gone.
I turn to make the walk home, fully aware that he will not be following. There will be no shy knock upon my door, no loving ardour within my bed... He will be home, he is with her. And that's okay, I tell myself.
Because it has to be.
My breath catches with an upward glance and for a second I suspect I am in madness. From the haven of my empty bed, the ghost has followed to the trees.
Within the darkness and the green, far from me, he sits alone.
With clasped hands and crouching head, weighted legs drape lonely bench. Sunk in stoop with fragile bones; a shadow too lifeless to be my dream.
He is real.
Lost in thoughts, my love has the world on him.
...
"And what are you thinking?"
I place my lips, slow, on bare shoulder skin.
"Hmm?," warm dark eyes look up. Half wrapped in sheets, he rests, legs protectively curled against uncovered chest.
"Your face," I say. "You're thinking."
"I have a thinking face?"
"Yep. It crumples."
"Crumples?," he echoes.
"Yes." I graze my thumb between the dip of his brow. "Crumples."
With a gentle lean, I brush his lips with the tips of my own.
"Don't get me wrong. I like the crumple." Plump pink, they wait and I find them again. "Very much."
"I'm relieved."
"So...what were the thoughts?" I ask, in faith he would tell me if he could.
"Nothing," he covers with a smile. "They weren't anything."
Soft touch wraps the nape of my neck and wanting kiss takes my ready lips.
He whispers, "I was thinking it's cold in here and you should come back to bed."
...
"Sy?"
I say a word that has not left my mouth in a lifetime.
He looks up at me like he has missed hearing it, as if there is a part of him that is scared by it.
"Hi," he says quiet to the air.
I stumble forward into words. "What are you doing out here?"
"Nothing."
Rain tinged locks lay past sunken eyes and he sits, motionless. Huddled for fragile comfort, I wonder how he could ever look this small.
"Were you waiting for me?"
"No."
With timid caution, he lifts his gaze and doleful darkness finds its home.
"Yes. I don't know...maybe."
Within an instant I have found my place next to him and I sit, with knowledge there is nowhere else that I could be. Our legs brush in a passing touch and I tell my heart to hush.
"I've been walking, I just went walking and then I..." whisper turns to hush "...I was here."
Find me, find me always. Never let your body take you anywhere but where I am.
"It's gone one." I force myself into sense.
"I'm fine." He answers a question I did not ask. "I just needed some...space. I needed..."
"You can talk to me."
...
"You did not just say that."
"What?", angelically, he grins.
"Don't do those big brown eyes at me. You are not that innocent Syed Masood."
Leg pinning limb, I climb upon his waiting frame.
"I'm entirely innocent. I was just laying here minding my own business..."
"When you thought you'd say the worst thing you could possibly say to me?" My hands pin his forearms in play.
"I said you looked good!"
"And?" I press, the tickle of my finger tips interrogates defenceless skin.
"That was it! I definitely stopped speaking then. You're imagining things again."
"Even better..." I bend to flickering eyes. "...I'm a senile pensioner now am I?"
"Okay Okay!", a laugh reverberates through playful ribs. "I said you looked good..." and he gives me that smile he knows will forgive him anything "...for your age."
"That's it! You are so getting it now."
Punishment ready and willing to serve, my lips on his throat is my brutal rebuke.
...
"How? How can I talk to you Christian?" he asks me as if I have answers to give, as if he craves them if I did.
"You think things..." I tell him all that I have "...and then instead of bottling them up, you say them out loud. Before you know it, you're talking," and I smile despite myself.
"Everything's so easy isn't it?"
"No. No it's really not." I shake my gaze to my sitting feet. "But I know you, and no matter how much you think you should keep everything in that head, it won't make anything better. It never did."
"Things were different then..." his words wander with his eyes and I wonder if he is picturing us then like I know I am.
"Yeah they were." I shake myself back. "I still...care. You can talk to me...anytime."
"Not about this I can't."
"About anything."
"I'm married," he tells me in lifeless flat, as if it needs reminding.
"Yeah..." the old truth stops me for a moment.
"But you're still you," I promise in a whisper. As if unaware how time has passed, fingers on instinct reach to mend the strand laced cracks. A familiar listless lock sits past tired eyes and I stroke nervous fringe back into ordered place. "And I'm still me."
In part to prove my words with our touch, in part to give myself a moment more, my hand finds his cheek and I soothe stubbled skin with a gentle thumb.
His bottom lip dips, his mouth parts and for a second I think I have him.
"I...have to go," he leaps up as if attacked. "You were right, it's late."
I see that look in his eyes and the guilt crushes me as the lie crushes him. In trying to save myself, in blinding my sight from his, I failed to watch over, I failed in saving him.
"Syed..."
"They'll be wondering where I am."
He scrambles away, I watch him go, and the last moment has passed in which I convince myself he is happy.