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I smiled, though something in my chest ached at the thought of this year ending.

I took it from his fingers, closing my eyes.

And for one small second, I let myself wish for the impossible.

For the moonlight to stray on the floor, and for the room to remain dark. For his arms to stay around me, and this strange beautiful world we’d made between scattered sequins and whispered breaths to never have to end.

I opened my eyes, finding his fixed on mine.

“What did you wish for?”

I leaned down, kissing the corner of his smiling mouth. “I can’t tell you.”

His grin is soft, and I want to kiss it again. “Then I hope it comes true.”

And so, I didn’t try to imagine how the night would end in nightmares and fear.

I only wished for this one to never end.

115

Damien

Play - Lovers in Another Life by Matthiew Perryman Jones

A soul for love

Mireya’s legs are on my lap and her eyes are completely absorbed by whatever is written on this file. She’s been studying it for days, over and over again, overworking herself to find anything that would help.

Her determination to find the killer worries me somehow. So does my own reaction to it. Somewhere along the way, without ever making a conscious decision, I let the case become secondary to her. For months, I have put her first in my mind. Her safety, her state of mind, whether she has eaten or slept, if she’s pushing herself too far.

She keeps trying to tell me that she’s okay, that we should focus on the case because it’s my own mission, and I nod.

But every time Kyle calls, asking if I have any update, a name, evidence, even some progress, I give them the same answer: My student and I are working on it.

She has become determined to find him, no matter what it costs her. And I know she thinks I don’t see what it actually does to her. I do. Sometimes I go to her dorm, and find her surrounded by new files, searching through them left and right as though the answer might be hiding somewhere between the pages. Her eyes are wide, her pupils blown, her hands restless. She’ll look at me and tell me that she’s just tired and needs to keep going.

I let her say it. But I know what I’m looking at. I know how much it takes for her to keep investigating while fighting her own demons.

Because the moment she learned it was him, since she connected him to her mother, it stopped being grief and turned into unhealthy focus. Even her drawings follow it now.

Last night I found her on the rooftop of the beach house. She had her sketchbook open, legs folded under her like she wasn’t balancing on the edge of anything at all.

Blue was asleep beside her.

On the page was a lily, an eye at its center, and a shadow trying to push its way out from inside it, like it had been trapped there too long to stay still. I remember not speaking for a while, I kept watching her and even sat with her until she came back from whatever hell she was hiding in. There are patterns I recognize in people before they admit them to themselves.

Fixation starts as grief when it stops behaving like grief. And with her, it always feels one step away from turning into self-destruction.

Sometimes I feel like I’m losing her every time she smiles. I don’t know how to tell her that without becoming another thing she tries to survive, so I stay silent and help her instead.

These thoughts kept circling as I watched her face tonight, lit by the green glow of the outdated terminal we’d been forced to use in the library.

The digital archives were incomplete, but she was focused on it anyway, scrolling, searching for anything. At this point we’re sure that the killer is linked to St. Ellesta and Porter. But it feels like he’s been erased, like his entire identity is blurry.

Mireya doesn’t care. The rage in her eyes is so different from her usual rage.

“Still empty?” she asks without looking away from the screen.