Hereafter

Surprises

As we stood at the end of the bridge with the fog swirling around our ankles, Aaron looked from me to Tristan with innocent bemusement, kind of like a little kid standing outside on the playground on his first day of school, wondering if his parents really were going to leave him there alone.

“What are we doing here?” he asked.

Tristan looked down at my hand. I felt the cold weight of the coin cupped inside my palm. I cleared my throat, and my eyes welled up.

“We’re here to say good-bye,” I said.

Tristan dipped his head and took a step back on the sandy, rocky road, giving us space.

Aaron looked at me quizzically. “Are you going somewhere?”

“No,” I said sadly. “You are.”

I handed him the coin, and he held it up between his thumb and forefinger, studying it. “Where am I going?”

“Someplace amazing,” I told him, my heart aching like crazy. “Someplace where you’ll be happy and…at peace.”

That was how I imagined the Light would be. The way I hoped it would be.

Aaron smiled. “That sounds fairly awesome.”

I grinned, struggling to hold back the tears, and put my hand on his back, turning him toward the bridge. “All you have to do is hold on to that and walk across the bridge,” I told him. “You’ll be there before you know it.”

Aaron took one step, then looked back at me. “I wish you could come.”

“Me, too.” I reached out and hugged him as tightly as I could, trying to solidify the feeling of him, his clean scent, in my memory. “It’s been so nice knowing you,” I whispered.

“You, too,” he told me. “Thanks for everything. I mean it, Rory. You’ve been a really good friend.”

I looked over at Tristan. It was almost as if Aaron knew where he was going. Maybe some small part of him did.

“Good-bye,” Aaron said to Tristan rather formally.

Tristan lifted a hand in a wave, and Aaron strode into the fog surrounding the bridge. The second he was gone, I dropped my face into my hands and cried, feeling guilty and selfish for it. Aaron was going to be fine. He was going to the Light. It was me I was crying for.

Suddenly I felt Tristan’s warm hand slide up my back and clasp my shoulder. “Rory,” he said, his voice full of anguish and grief and comfort and hope.

I turned toward him, knowing my face was covered in tears, knowing my nose was swollen and my eyes were red and my lips were dry and puffy. Knowing and not caring.

Tristan reached up and ran his thumb over my cheek, tilting my face so I had to look him in the eye.

“Rory,” he said again.

“I’m sorry,” I blubbered. “I just…I didn’t want…I didn’t want him to go.”

“I know,” he said, drying one cheek with the pad of his thumb. “I know.”

He took in a sharp breath, and then before I could realize what was happening, he kissed me. He kissed me so hard that I staggered backward until he tightened his grip on me to hold me up. I slid my hands up his broad back and tangled my fingers up in the soft, thick hair at the nape of his neck. Tristan kissed me like a guy who’d never kissed anyone before. Like a person who was so starved to be kissed he’d never stop. Not that I ever wanted him to. It didn’t even matter that my skin was smeared with tears. I’d never experienced a kiss so perfect. I’d never experienced anything so perfect.

When he finally pulled away, his hands gripped the back of my T-shirt and we were standing so close I couldn’t tell whose legs were whose. We both gasped for breath, our exhalations mingling between us.

“I thought you said—”

“Forget what I said,” he interjected. “I’m just sick of it.”

“Sick of what?” I asked, my brow creasing.

“Sick of trying to keep away from you,” Tristan said with a sigh. He held the back of my neck with one hand. “I’ve only been doing it for ten days, and it feels like an eternity.”

He kissed me again, and I smiled beneath his lips. He’d been counting the days, struggling all along to keep from wanting me, and now he was breaking the rules for me—breaking his own rules. Everything felt lighter suddenly. It was as if some chokehold on my heart had loosened and now it could really breathe.

Tristan broke off the kiss and wrapped his arms around me. For a long time we just stood there, folded against each other. My eyelashes were still wet, my heart brimming.

I leaned back to look him in the eye again, but then Tristan’s expression suddenly darkened. I glanced over my shoulder to see what had caught his attention. Along the side of the road, a swath of the green reeds had dried out and turned brown, bending toward the road. Some of them were broken, sticking out at violent angles, like bony fingers reaching up from a grave.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Nothing,” he said, forcing a smile. “It’s nothing.” He entwined his fingers with mine. “Let’s walk back.”

“What about your car?” I asked, glancing over at his Range Rover, parked near the foot of the bridge.

“I’ll get it later,” he told me. “Right now, I’m in the mood for a nice, long stroll. With you.”

I grinned. “I like that plan.”

Our hands swinging between us, we walked down the hill toward town. Tristan pointed out various landmarks to me—a tree he used to climb when he first arrived on the island, trying to see across the ocean; a steep hill he and Joaquin had once raced down on bikes before crashing into each other at the bottom; the spot in the park where he and Krista had picnicked when she’d first learned the truth about Juniper Landing and her role here. I sensed how much Tristan loved this place—not just his mission, but this island.

Downtown Juniper Landing was bustling, full of people headed to the docks for dinner or strolling through the park with ice-cream cones. The trilling music of a flute wafted out through an open window somewhere as screen doors squeaked and people laughed. Everything seemed so peaceful, and the grass beneath our feet glimmered from the moisture left behind by the fog.

“And this is where I was standing the first time I saw you,” Tristan said, pausing in front of the general store.

“You remember that?” I asked with a blush.

“I’ll never forget it,” he said, sounding nostalgic.

I laughed suddenly.

“What?” he asked, squeezing my hand.

“I still can’t believe you kissed me,” I said.

He took a deep breath and blushed. “I just finally decided…”

“What?” I asked, biting my bottom lip. “You decided what?”

He lifted one shoulder and looked me in the eye. “I decided that you’re more important.”

For a second I couldn’t breathe, but in a good way. There was so much meaning in that one sentence, so much surrender and trust, it actually took my breath away.

I was just rising up on my toes to kiss him when his eyes flicked past me and he tensed. I turned to see that Nadia had just walked out of the general store and now stood rooted to the sidewalk, a stunned expression on her face. My mouth went dry as her eyes slowly trailed down to our hands, still clasped between us.

“Nadia,” Tristan said.

Her dark eyes were like daggers. “Unbelievable,” she said, stepping off the sidewalk. “So much for the rules, huh, Tristan?” she yelled, throwing her hands wide as she walked backward across the street.

She grabbed a dirt bike that had been tossed on the grass in the park and quickly pedaled away, heading down toward the beach. Tristan sighed.

“I’m guessing that’s not good,” I said quietly.

“No, probably not,” he replied.

I was about to ask him about Nadia, about what exactly had happened between them and what she had meant the other night when she’d confronted me—when I glimpsed the weather vane from the corner of my eye.

Instantly, all the activity around me faded to black. All I could see was the golden swan, sitting up there fat and proud atop its arrow. The arrow that was pointing south.

My vision grayed. I grasped his arm, the dizziness hitting me so hard I thought I might go down. “Tristan,” I gasped.

He turned to look, and his jaw went slack.

“It…it can’t…” I stuttered. “It can’t be. That doesn’t mean…Aaron didn’t go to the Shadowlands.”

A line of concern formed between Tristan’s eyes. He seemed to be weighing his response. Weighing it for far too long.

“Tristan!” I shouted. A couple who was sitting at a table nearby turned to gape.

“Come here.” Tristan pulled me gently but firmly around the corner at the end of the block, away from the prying, curious eyes of the visitors. I pressed back against the shingled outer wall of the general store, my heart pounding desperately inside my chest.

“This isn’t happening. It can’t be happening,” I told him.

“I’m sorry,” he said firmly. “But it is.”

“No!” I wailed. “He’s a good person. You should have felt the regret and sorrow coming off of him tonight when he talked about his father. There’s no way he could have ever done anything awful enough in his life to warrant being sent to the Shadowlands.”

“I’m sorry, Rory, but this happens sometimes,” Tristan said calmly, soothingly. He ran a hand over my hair, then rested it comfortingly on my shoulder. “We think we know these people, but—”

“But nothing!” I shouted, flinging his hand off me and pushing away from the wall. “We have to help him. We have to get him out of there. We have to—”

“No!” he spat.

I stopped short, surprised at being shouted at. Tristan looked away, but I wasn’t sure whether he was ashamed at having barked in my face or taking a breath because he was so angry.

“We can’t,” he said more calmly.

“What do you mean, we can’t? There’s been a mistake. There must be something we can—”

“No one ever comes back from the Shadowlands,” Tristan said ominously. “Or the Light. Once it’s done, it’s done.”

My eyes brimmed. “But Aaron’s—”

“Even if we could get him out of there, we wouldn’t,” Tristan interjected, his jaw clenched. “The coins are never wrong.”

I pressed my hands into my forehead, unable to comprehend, unable to accept what he was saying. I had brought Aaron up there and told him he was going somewhere to be happy and at peace. I had sent him on his way with that trusting smile on his face. He’d told me I was a good friend. He’d thanked me for all I’d done. And I’d sent him straight to hell.

“No, Tristan. No!” I cried, backing away from him. “This can’t be right. We have to do something. We have to!”

“There’s nothing we can do, Rory,” Tristan said grimly, looking past me at the weather vane. “If Aaron went to the Shadowlands, then that’s where he was supposed to go.”