Waiting

16

Arie POV

The house was quiet in the way homes become quiet when everyone inside has already begun grieving before the final breath has been taken.

Porch light spilled weakly across the front steps. Somewhere deeper inside, a television murmured at low volume, forgotten. The air carried the scent of old wood, cooled tea, medication, and the slow unraveling of mortal life.

Rue moved beside me with her usual composed ease, her celestial light softened beneath the veil so as not to disturb the living. Together we crossed the threshold without sound, passing through a dim hallway lined with family photographs and small ordinary relics of a life well lived.

Children at graduations.

Grandchildren in Halloween costumes.

A younger version of the man we had come for, smiling beside a woman with bright eyes and a stubborn chin.

His wife, I assumed.

I felt his tether before I saw him.

Thin.

Gentle.

Ready.

The old man lay propped against a nest of pillows in a room washed gold by a bedside lamp. His breathing was shallow, uneven, but peaceful. One hand rested over his chest; the other lay open atop the blanket as though he had simply grown too tired to keep holding on.

A woman slept in the armchair beside the bed, her head tilted uncomfortably against the cushion. His daughter, perhaps. Or granddaughter. Someone who had promised not to leave him alone and had lost her battle with exhaustion only minutes ago.

Rue paused near the foot of the bed.

I stepped closer.

The old man’s eyes opened before I touched the tether.

Not the confused opening of a failing body.

Not fear.

Recognition.

His cloudy gaze settled first on me, then on Rue, and to my surprise, he smiled.

“Well,” he whispered, voice thin but amused, “about time.”

Rue lifted a brow.

I said nothing.

The old man’s smile deepened faintly. “You two took long enough. I was beginning to think I’d have to leave on my own.”

Rue laughed softly under her breath.

I found myself almost smiling.

“You can see us,” I said.

“Clear as day,” he replied. “Been seeing strange light at the edge of things for the last three days. Figured it meant my girl was getting impatient.”

His girl.

My attention sharpened.

“You are not afraid?” I asked.

He looked at me as though I had asked whether he was afraid of going home.

“No,” he said simply. “Why would I be?”

His gaze shifted upward for a moment, as though listening to something beyond the room.

“She’s been waiting for me.”

Something in his tone made the words land harder than they should have.

Not hope.

Not fantasy.

Certainty.

I glanced once at Rue. She, too, had gone still.

“How do you know that?” I asked quietly.

The old man’s eyes returned to mine, and though his body was weak, there was nothing weak in the peace written across his face.

“Because I can feel her,” he said. “Been able to for weeks now. Maybe longer.” His weathered hand shifted slightly against the blanket. “Sixty-seven years with someone leaves a mark. Doesn’t matter if the Good Lord took her home before me. She’s still the better half of my soul.”

My chest tightened unexpectedly.

The old man smiled to himself, gaze drifting toward the photograph on the nightstand.

“She hated waiting,” he murmured. “Never had patience for anything. Not traffic. Not bad coffee. Not me taking too long to get my shoes on.” His smile turned softer. “But she waited for this.”

Rue’s expression gentled.

I found myself asking before I had fully decided to speak.

“You were married sixty-seven years?”

“Sixty-seven,” he said proudly. “And she made every one of them worth the trouble.”

“The trouble?” Rue asked lightly.

That earned a weak chuckle from him.

“Oh, sweetheart, you don’t stay married that long without some trouble.”

That startled a laugh out of Rue.

Even I felt the corner of my mouth shift.

The old man’s breathing hitched, but his peace did not.

“We fought,” he said. “Raised babies. Buried people we loved. Lost money. Made it back. Had years where we were tired and years where we were wild and years where we didn’t know what the hell we were doing.” He looked again toward the picture. “But she was mine, and I was hers, and that was the center of everything.”

I stood very still.

Something about hearing a mortal say those words with such ease, such certainty, unsettled me more than grief ever had.

Rue noticed.

Of course she noticed.

She remained silent.

The old man looked back at me then, more sharply than I expected from someone so near the end.

“You got someone?” he asked.

I should have said nothing.

Should have remained what I was.

But there was something about this room, this man, this certainty that made dishonesty feel almost profane.

“Yes,” I said quietly.

Rue’s eyes flicked toward me, but she said nothing.

The old man smiled as though he had known the answer before he asked.

“Mm.” He shifted weakly against the pillow. “That explains the look on your face.”

My brows drew together. “What look?”

“The one that says you’re happy about it and scared it’ll kill you.”

Rue made a sound suspiciously close to laughter.

I ignored her.

The old man’s smile broadened.

“That’s love,” he said. “Or the start of it.”

My throat felt strangely tight.

“How did you know?” I asked.

He looked at me for a long moment, as though weighing how to answer.

“Because when it’s real,” he said, “it doesn’t just brighten things. It makes you vulnerable to all of it. Joy. Fear. Hope. Loss. The whole lot.” His eyes drifted to the sleeping woman in the chair, then back to me. “You don’t get one without risking the others.”

That landed somewhere deep.

I thought of Summer on the beach, speaking to the sunset as though it had always belonged to her.

I thought of how quickly fear had followed hope the moment I learned she had another possible path.

The old man continued, voice growing softer.

“But if you’re lucky—if you’re real lucky—you get someone worth the risk.”

Silence settled over the room.

Not empty.

Full.

I found myself looking toward the photograph on the nightstand again.

The woman smiled back with the easy confidence of someone who had been deeply loved and had known it.

“What was she like?” I heard myself ask.

The old man’s whole face changed.

Not brighter.

Deeper.

As though even now, speaking of her gave him strength.

“She was stubborn,” he said immediately. “Bossy. Beautiful. Mean as a snake when someone she loved was threatened.” Rue laughed again, quieter this time. The old man smiled. “She sang while she cooked, even though she couldn’t carry a tune. Burned every pancake she ever tried to make but refused to let me touch the griddle.” His eyes shone faintly. “She made every place feel like home.”

Home.

Summer had said something like that too, standing under a sky turning gold.

The old man kept going, and now I understood that he needed to. He was not merely reminiscing.

He was returning to her in words before he returned in truth.

“We had four kids,” he said. “Then grandkids. Then great-grandbabies running around the yard every summer. We built a life. Not a perfect one. A real one.”

Something in my chest pulled sharply at that.

Not a perfect one.

A real one.

I had spent so long imagining destiny as something vast and celestial and unbreakable that I had never fully considered its mortal shape.

Shared dinners.

Old arguments.

Children.

A house that smelled like coffee and flour and years.

The old man looked at me again, and this time there was no amusement in him. Only kindness.

“If she’s yours,” he said, “don’t waste time being afraid of that.”

I frowned slightly. “Of what?”

“Of needing her.”

The room went very still.

“People think love is the grand moment,” he said. “It isn’t. Not really. It’s the choosing. Over and over. When you’re tired. When you’re angry. When life gets ugly. When the shine wears off and you still look at them and think, yes. Still you.”

Rue had gone quiet enough that I could almost forget she was there.

The old man’s breath caught once, then settled again.

“You don’t have to know everything at the start,” he murmured. “You just have to be honest when you know you’ve found something worth keeping.”

I did not know what to say to that.

Perhaps because I knew, with an ache that felt almost unbearable, that I had already found something worth keeping.

The old man looked toward the photograph one final time.

Then he smiled.

Softly.

“There you are, baby.”

The tether fluttered.

Brightened once.

I stepped closer to the bed.

Rue moved beside me, her presence quiet and reverent now.

The old man looked at me without fear.

Only readiness.

“Will it hurt?” he asked.

“No,” I told him.

That, at least, I could always promise.

He nodded.

“Good.” His eyes shifted once more toward the picture of his wife. “Take me to her.”

I placed my hand gently above his heart.

The tether yielded at once.

No resistance.

No confusion.

Just release.

His soul rose from the failing body in a slow, golden breath, gathering shape beside the bed with all the softness of morning mist touched by sunlight. For one moment he stood there, younger somehow—not in face, but in essence. Lighter. Whole.

He looked down once at the body he had left behind, then at the sleeping family member in the chair.

Love moved across his features, quiet and complete.

Then he turned his gaze upward.

And smiled.

I felt it then.

Another presence.

Waiting.

Bright.

Open.

The unmistakable pull of a soul that had loved him long and well and had never once let go.

The old man laughed—a sound full of wonder, recognition, and relief so deep it bordered on joy.

“Told you,” he whispered.

And then he was gone.

Drawn forward into the light waiting beyond this world.

Into her.

The room fell still.

Beside me, Rue exhaled slowly.

I lowered my hand and looked once more at the photograph on the nightstand.

Sixty-seven years.

A lifetime by mortal measure.

An instant by mine.

And yet somehow long enough to create a bond that death itself had not broken, only delayed.

For the first time since leaving Summer’s house, the fear inside me changed shape.

It did not lessen.

It deepened.

Because now I understood something I had not before.

To love Summer would not simply mean wanting her.

It would mean building something with her so real, so enduring, that even death would have to respect it.

And I wanted that.

Not the celestial version.

Not only fate and power and destiny.

I wanted the mortal parts too.

The ordinary sacredness of a life shared long enough to become inseparable.

Rue touched my arm lightly.

“You’re thinking too loudly again.”

I glanced at her.

She smiled, softer than usual.

“That one was a gift,” she said.

I looked once more at the empty space where the old man had stood.

“Yes,” I said quietly.

He had been.

The next thought settled into me just as deeply.

I did not want to stand at a distance and merely wait for fate to do its work.

I wanted to know Summer as she was now.

To walk where she walked.

To be near her world without crushing it beneath what I truly was.

I wanted the ordinary human pieces.

The school days.

The awkwardness.

The nearness.

The chance to build something real while she was still wholly herself.

I looked at Rue.

“I want all of it.”

Her brows lifted.

“All of what?”

“The mortal parts,” I said. “The ordinary parts. The human ones.”

Rue stared at me.

Then slowly, her mouth began to curve.

“Oh no,” she said, already delighted. “What are you about to say?”

“I want to do this properly,” I said. “I do not want to stand at a distance and wait for fate to do its work. I want to know her as she is now.” My jaw tightened with the force of it. “I want to know what it is to be seventeen.”

Rue’s eyes widened.

I kept going.

“I want to go to school. I want to be where she is. I want to do what humans do, if that is what lets me be near her world as it exists now.”

Rue made a sound that was half laugh, half delight.

“You,” she said, “want to go to high school?”

I looked at her flatly.

“Yes.”

Rue covered her mouth with one hand, silver eyes shining.

“Oh, this is magnificent.”

“It is not magnificent.”

“It is magnificent,” she corrected. “You, who have existed since before language learned how to behave, want to pretend to be a teenage boy so you can date your mate?”

“When you say it like that, it sounds ridiculous.”

“That is because it is ridiculous.”

But beneath the delight, she understood.

I did not want to hover over Summer like some unseen force waiting for her soul to ripen into destiny.

I wanted to walk beside her in the life she had now.

Rue’s expression softened.

“You really mean it.”

“Yes.”

She smiled, almost unbearably fond.

“Oh, Arie. You are hopeless.”

That, unfortunately, might have been true.

“Well,” she said, brightening instantly, “I think it is a wonderful idea.”

I narrowed my eyes.

That much enthusiasm made me suspicious.

Rue only smiled wider.

“A terrible idea in practical terms,” she added, “but a wonderful one in every other sense.”

“I will need records,” I said, already thinking ahead. “A name. An age. A reason for arriving midyear. Housing close enough to town that it makes sense, but not so close that it raises questions. Clothing.”

Rue’s eyes lit immediately.

“Oh, I am absolutely helping with that.”

“No.”

Rue looked offended.

“You cannot stop me.”

“I can try.”

“You will fail.”

That, too, was likely true.