To Those Who Wait by Hayden Sharpe (digital e reader txt) 📕

Eli, Eli!”

He held me close to his chest and rested his chin on my head. “You…” he began. “You remember me now?”

“I could never forget you,” I hiccupped. “Never truly.”

“I did go back,” he whispered. “I did go back home. But you were already gone. I looked for you.”

“I am so so sorry,” I murmured. “I was distracted.”

“I know.”

“Eli?” I sniffled, and looked up at him. His beautiful blue-green eyes… they were just as I remembered. They shone with tears in the darkness. “Eli, please, please, don’t cry,” I begged, and wiped his eyes with one of my pale knuckles. He kept my hand pressed to his face and held me tenderly.

“I love you,” he mumbled. “I still love you.”

“I love you too,” I sniffed, and rested my head on his shoulder. He stroked my back and closed his eyes. His mind was sobbing in relief. I missed you so much,

I thought.

I missed you too. I died every day I was away from you.

My heart stopped. In truth?

In truth.

I trembled and shifted to face him. “Are you alright?” he asked softly, eyes concerned.

“B-Better than alright,” I breathed. “I want to know…”

“Know what?”

“If I still have you memorized.” I blushed, and kissed his lips lightly. I ran my fingers through his hair, and realized… we could have easily been sitting on the familiar cliffside. It could easily have been the Middle Ages again, we could have easily been avoiding my mother’s prejudice, Morgaine’s scorn. I felt like flying once more.

He kissed me back, holding me close. Over a thousand years,

his mind laughed, and nothing has changed.

Everything has changed,

I thought. Only this hasn’t.

This hasn’t,

he agreed.

Sometime in the 2000's

Eli

It wasn’t long after that that Avelina began to sleep through the night without waking up screaming. I was always there to hold her when she broke down sobbing, and always there to make her smile. Always there to tell her it would be alright. There as her hair returned to its original brown, there when we reassured Abrahil that she was alright.

I could count the minutes on two hands or less when our hands were not entwined.

It was the happiest I’d been in years. I could finally fulfill that last promise to her; that I’d hold her forever. I’d die before I broke that vow.

“Eli,” she whispered to me one night as her head nodded onto my chest. “Thank God I have you.”

I held her and rubbed her shoulder as she drifted to sleep. “What a coincidence,” I whispered. “I thank God for having you

.”

She smiled, and looked up at me with those knowing, light blue eyes. Her arm tightened around my waist in one pulse before she let out a soft yawn and snuggled against me in sleep.

And I knew, as I fell asleep myself, that all those years had paid off. That good things did come to those who waited.

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Publication Date: 09-25-2012

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