Mirror of My Soul by Joey Hill (book club recommendations .TXT) 📕

love. As he sat on his heels there long moments with her in her position of supplication before him, that thought repeated itself in his mind and love won out.

For he remembered the message she’d left for him. Chloe had insisted on calling and telling him as soon as they’d let her have a phone at the hospital. Sometimes it had been the only thing he’d been able to hold on to this past week, to believe somewhere deep inside her Marguerite was still there, wanting to be with him.

Marguerite had wanted him. Wanted to live with him. Which meant going onto

that building had been even more difficult for her than most, because she’d just newly discovered the desire to live for love and she was about to go do something she’d been certain would obliterate that dream. He had been stupid to lose faith for even a moment. He thanked God that when he had, some other strength he could not name had kept him going.

All of that flooded in, intertwining with his harsher feelings, rational and irrational thought warring in an impossible conflict, until love touched him with insistent hands, recalling one other memory that made the conflict meaningless.

He knelt, lifting her chin. “Marguerite, when you jumped, do you remember

anything that went right that should have gone all wrong?”

“You mean, other than us surviving that drop?” Her tone was dry, though her voice still shook with her emotions.

“It’s important. Remember for me, if it’s not too painful, angel.”

Marguerite thought back to the dive off the building, the shock of the dead wind freefall, her father’s abrupt release when she had expected more tenacity. The chute coming free…

“The whole jump was a miracle.” She shook her head. “My best hope was to get

Natalie to the ground in a way she had half a chance of surviving. BASE jumping, building jumping…” she amended the term for his understanding, “is very dangerous and very precise. Her additional weight, my father’s interference, even when I released the chute. I should have been dead. Natalie might have lived, but likely with crippling injury. I didn’t expect to make it.”

“I know.” And the anger and pain were in his voice. She reached up to him, aching, but he closed his hand on her wrist, preventing her from touching him.

“Did Chloe tell you?”

“She did. I understand. I do, angel. It’s just…it’s going to take me some time. Just let it go for now.”

So she subsided, but it was difficult, for she needed his arms around her. “Why did you ask me that?”

“Because.” He released her to run both hands over his face, a gesture so weary and un-Tyler-like that it almost frightened her. Then she squelched the fear. She would not 206

Mirror of My Soul

be Nina. She realized now she relied on his strength, had become dependent on it in a frighteningly short time, but she would never let him think he could not rely on hers and he was due for some leaning. Some serious leaning.

It was a humbling thought, to realize the weight of the world could not break him, but the loss of her could have. The impact of that struck her hard yet it told her what he needed. What she needed to give him. But first she needed to be sure of her direction.

“Have I lost your love, Tyler?” She spoke the words softly, a gift she’d never asked for, never thought she wanted. Now her life seemed to hinge on it. There was an abyss moving inside her, frozen belief her only light. Her voice trembled like a sputtering flame, unable to let him finish whatever it was he was trying to find out because she needed to know right then.

Shock coursed over his features, but she continued on.

“You’ve cared for me, yes,” she managed carefully. “As I’d expect you to do for me, or Leila, or Sarah or Violet, any woman you care about in similar circumstances. I just need to know.” Her voice broke. “Have I hurt you past bearing?”

He pulled her into his arms and lay back, pulling her onto him so he held her firmly against his full length, her body wrapped in his arms, her head beneath his chin.

“When you jumped from that building, I died,” he said simply, his voice a whisper in her ear. “I was so certain that I was going to lose you that I haven’t known how to feel or think since, beyond the basic steps of caring for you. There’s this rage in me, this anger. Every time I touch you, I want to hold you so tightly that I’ll see pain in your face so it matches what’s raging inside of me. So I’m afraid to let it show. I don’t know what to do with it. I love you so much, Marguerite. There are no words for this kind of love.

It’s not pretty or romantic, it’s as visceral as sex or breathing, something undeniable, necessary to go on living, for anything else to matter.

“I…God…” His hands clutched her. She felt it ripping at him, the memories of one love lost mingling with one almost lost. It was going to tear his mind in two, break a man who believed he was supposed to be unbreakable.

Marguerite lifted up, looked into his face, inches between them. Her skin was pale, face thin, but in her eyes Tyler saw that deep understanding she had of the world, its ugliness as well as its beauty, the temporal nature of it all. And something else. Her love for him riding all of it like a boat on rough seas, shining fiercely on her face like an angel’s light fairly revealed to a mortal’s fragile eyes. He blinked at the power of it as she held nothing back, showing him how important his answer was to her.

She needed him as much as he needed her. Whatever else had happened on her

leap, she was no longer afraid to show it.

“Take