Please understand. Please forgive me. I prayed every day for you to be alive, until hope became painful. Don't hate me. I still love you.

And then, just at that moment, when I'm no longer sure if I'm dreaming or awake or walking some valley in between where everything you wish for comes true, I feel the flutter of his lips on mine.

Waste today, want tomorrow.

But it does not tell you this: that love will turn the whole world into something greater than itself.

"And I love you too." His fingers skate the edge of my jaw, dance briefly over my lips. "You should know that. You have to know that."

He is no longer mine to lose, but the grief is there, a gnawing sense of disbelief.

The idea—the fact of it, the fact that he even noticed and thought about me for more than one second—is huge and overwhelming, makes my legs go tingly and my hands feel numb.