THE GIFT (17 page)

“I’m glad you did,” she said. “I would have been flattened by that guy.”

“Then you spoke and your voice was so familiar to me. I couldn’t place it at first, but then I went home and lay in my bed thinking about things. When Cassandra died, I wanted to kill myself. I saw a pamphlet as I was leaving Cassandra’s room after they pronounced her dead. I called the number and I spoke to a woman on the phone as I stood looking out a window in an empty waiting room. She saved me from ending my own life just because I didn’t know what else to do after all the pain and guilt.

“It was you, Amanda. You were the woman on the other end of the line. You’re wrong to think I love you because you have her eyes. I love you because you gave me another reason to live. I loved you more when that reason became you,” he finished.

Amanda stood looking at him in disbelief. It all came back to her. The day of her surgery, the call from a man who just lost his fiancée. He had a dog and a sister. There were bits and pieces but yes, it was Jagger she had talked to that day right before her surgery. No wonder he had seemed so familiar to her from time to time. It was his voice and seeing him around the hospital. She looked at him with tears in her eyes and then his mouth was on hers, hungry and searching hers for salvation. They stood there, intertwined in a passionate kiss until he finally pulled free, looking down at her with tears streaming down her face.

“Please find a way to forgive me for my shortcomings, Amanda. I know I’ve gone about this all wrong, but I love you so much. You’re my destiny. It’s you. It was always you,” he told her, brushing away her tears.

“I love you too, Jagger. There is nothing to forgive. I just needed to understand and now I do,” she told him, pulling him close to her once again. Everything finally made complete sense and she wondered why it had been so hard for them to get to this point.

They stood there in one another’s arms, just holding on to one another like there was no one else in the world...and in that moment, it might as well have been true.

~~Finis~~