I was caught in a void. No memories. No regrets. No family. No accomplishments. No demons. And maybe the most noticeable absence was that of love. I had never experienced love before, most assuredly not from my mother and definitely not from any of the other people that had filtered in and out of my life since I set myself free of the shackles of the man I was supposed to always be, but ever since Keelyn, there had been something different, and now that it was gone, I knew what it was.
Even when she wasn’t mine, there was still love. It was prickly and sometimes uncomfortable. It was too big to fit anywhere. It was complex and often hidden behind things that were easier to identify, like lust, anger, and frustration, but regardless of all of that, I could see now that it was love and I missed it dearly while I was lost here in this nothingness.
I missed the bite of it and the softness that followed. I missed the way it was the only thing that filled me up when I had spent my life being so empty of everything. I missed the way it challenged me and forced me to do more, to be more. I missed the way that love made me think and consider my actions and their effect on others. I was not a thing anymore. I was a man . . . a man that loved a woman, had loved a woman with every broken part of me that the past had left me with, and now that it was gone, I really and truly understood what my hell was supposed to be like.
This . . .
This emptiness.
This nothing.
This void.
This hollowness.
This was actually hell, and sure, maybe I deserved it for all the bad things I had done in the past, but that didn’t make the knowledge any easier to accept or the struggle against the constant blackness any less arduous.
I don’t know how long I floated lost and alone. It felt like forever, and every single second that passed that I spent without the one thing I felt like I needed if I were to have even a slight chance at survival, I could feel myself sinking deeper and more fully into the abyss. It was pulling me under and I was helpless to stop it.
Just when I thought it was time to give up, time to surrender to the darkness and let the pit of nothing take me, I felt something . . . something sharp and awful.
Pain like a raging wildfire lit up all over me from the inside out. All that nothing was replaced with agony and ache like I had never experienced before. I was hollowed out, so empty of anything else that the pain ate me up like a meal. There was so much room inside of me for it to crawl into and settle down. It was a whole new kind of suffering and torture, but I welcomed it. I knew that as long as I was feeling something, even if it was something that would make most men wish for the quiet and enveloping blackness of death, I was alive and that thing I needed to live was out there somewhere, I just needed to find it.
I burned for days. Hotter than any fire, brighter than any star, more furious than any kind of hungry flame. The pain fed on me and then, somehow, some way, it took all I had to give and burned itself out and all that was left of me was ash. Light and fluffy ash that floated on soft breath, breath that whispered across my barren soul. I heard a voice call my name over and over again and the remnants of who I was picked up speed and tried to chase the noise down.
I tripped in the air. I free-fell from the nothing and the pain back into love.
It was there waiting with open arms to catch me. I heard it calling to me, guiding me in the only direction I could go when death didn’t answer my knock. It was a journey that felt like it took forever. Every time I thought I was making my way to where I needed to be, to where I heard love calling me, something would get in my way. I would lose the sounds, the fire and pain would flare back up, and the darkness would again sneak up on me and try to pull me under. I didn’t let it. Nothing mattered but getting to where love was waiting. Nothing could stand in the way of me getting to where I was always supposed to be.
I felt it all around me. Love wasn’t just guiding me, it was pulling me, prodding me, filling me up, and pushing everything else out. Love was going to win and I simply had to let it happen, so I surrendered the fight and let love take me by the hand to lead me the rest of the way out of the darkness.
I was really uncomfortable, but when I finally managed to pull my eyes open, I was looking up at the prettiest cloudy day I had ever seen. The sky was stormy and there was rain falling from the clouds and landing on my face, but it was still the most welcome thing I had ever locked my eyes on.
She was blurry. In fact, I was seeing triplets that looked just like my Key with different hair, but there was no missing that my feisty fighter of a woman was hovering over me, pulling me from the threshold. Love wanted me more than death did. I tried to blink so that I could bring her into focus but that didn’t work, and every time my eyes closed it felt like it took a monumental effort to get them back open.
I opened my mouth to ask her what happened, to ask her where I was and why her hair was now a deep, rich chocolate brown instead of Crayola red, but nothing came out. I wheezed like I was a thousand-year-old man, and suddenly Key’s pretty, concerned face was replaced by a much sterner one. The guy had a stethoscope around his neck and was barking orders across me, and I vaguely felt my arm being picked up and the sheet that was covering me get shifted off my body.
I’m sure they had all kinds of important medical mumbo jumbo to take care of, but all I wanted was Key. I tried to shake the doctor off as he leaned over me, only to find that I was down to one working appendage. It seemed like my right arm was strapped pretty effectively to my chest, meaning I couldn’t reach for my girl. That made me agitated, but I was pinned down and so very weak. I tried to call her name and realized the reason I couldn’t was because I had something hard and plastic shoved between my teeth. I went to move my head to dislodge it only to have the doctor put his hand heavily on my forehead. I growled and went to jerk my head away, but that made black spots dance in front of my eyes and pain slice across my brain.