Life After: The Complete Series

by Julie Hall

  “You’re awake.” His deep voice was the final piece.

  It was really him.

  I was up on my knees, reaching for him, and I didn’t even remember moving. Reality clicked in right before my fingers touched him, and I snatched my hand back.

  “Oh my gosh. I can see the dead.” Wait, that doesn’t make sense. I shook my head once, my mouth spilling words as soon as I thought them. “No, I must be dead.”

  How could I bask in the miracle that was seeing Logan again when I couldn’t remember how I’d died?

  My breathing changed to short bursts in and out. I was going into some type of shock.

  “Oh no, not this time,” Logan said before he shifted his body to press his weight into me, causing us both to tumble to the towel. “Just look at me and breathe, Audrey.”

  The warmth of his body in contrast to the chill of the closing day caused goosebumps to break out all over my skin. Taking my face between his hands, he forced my attention.

  My breathing picked up a notch.

  “Not helping,” I puffed out.

  A smile broke free on his face. “Then we’ll do things the fun way. Less talking, more kissing.”

  His mouth covered mine before I even had a chance to process his words.

  His lips were as soft as I remembered, and they moved over mine with skill. He gave my bottom lip a teasing nip to ensure he had my full attention.

  It worked.

  The next moment, I didn’t care that I was dead or how it had happened, but only that we were back together again.

  My hands snaked up his arms and buried themselves in his hair—shorter than I remembered, but just as soft.

  Who cared what realm we were in as long as we had each other?

  I was lost in the feel of him . . . until water slapped me in the face and along the side of my body, and a familiar voice yelled, “Get a room, you two!”

  Ashlynn?

  Logan pulled away, and I tilted my head back to see an upside-down view of my new roommate.

  “You can see us?” I asked.

  She shot me a funny look. “The whole beach can see you two, you goofball.”

  Huh?

  “Are you dead too?”

  “You have an odd sense of humor, you know that?” She tilted her head. “I see you found her after all.”

  “Yep, thanks for the help,” Logan said. “She was asleep when I came by, so I waited until she woke up.”

  “Well, that was chivalrous of you. I probably would have poured water on her,” she said with a twinkle in her eye.

  “Isn’t that pretty much what you just did?” Logan asked with a brow hiked up.

  She smirked. “Hey, Audrey, I’ll see you back at the dorm later, yeah? You won’t get lost, right?”

  I shook my head, still watching her from my horizontal position as she jogged away.

  What was going on? She could see us. I could see him. They’d met.

  My head was about to explode.

  The only way I could be with Logan was if I were dead. Unless he wasn’t dead.

  But he’d died.

  Hadn’t he?

  “What’s happening right now?” I whispered to Logan. His face hovered just above mine, and half his body pressed me into the sand.

  His eyes swept my face. “I’ll never get tired of looking at you,” he whispered back. “You’re not dead, Audrey. I’m not dead either. We’re both here, on Earth, now. Alive. Together.”

  Moisture gathered in my eyes and spilled over. “But how? I was there. I tried to fight for you, but no one believed me. Your parents . . .” my voice gave out. That horrible, awful day. The worst of my life. And that included the day I got hit by a car.

  That day I’d fought for him in every way I could, and I’d lost.

  He murmured words of encouragement and sympathy over and over again. “It’s all right; I’m truly here.”

  Finally he sat up, pulled me to him, and guided my head to his chest. He buried his face in my hair and kept talking to me until my tears were spent, and even though I still didn’t know how this was possible, I was just happy that he was real.

  This was real. It was happening.

  I pushed back against him, and he let me go. I finally took an objective look at him.

  He was clearly Logan. I recognized everything about him. But he wasn’t the Logan I’d seen lying in that bed . . . and neither was he exactly the Logan I’d first met.

  His shorter hair was only one of the changes about him. He wasn’t emaciated like he’d been at the hospital, but neither was his build as large as it’d been before. His skin was several shades lighter than I was used to, his face a little thinner.

  They were all slight changes, but each one told a story.

  “Please, tell me what happened. How are you here?” I touched his face to reassure myself, and he captured my hand and held it to his cheek, closing his eyes to soak something indiscernible in.

  When he opened them again, I noticed they were the one thing about him that had not changed a single bit. His cobalt eyes, and the look in them when he gazed at me was exactly how I remembered.

  “I’m here because of you. I’m here because you helped save me.”

  “Your dad said I was delusional. They kicked me out of your room, out of their lives. I wasn’t even allowed to go to your funeral. Um . . . er . . . I guess there wasn’t a funeral.”

  “Yeah”—he scratched his head and ducked it—“you certainly made an impression on my parents that day.” He chuckled softly.

  “This’s not funny. I was led to believe you’d died. They were going to take you off life support. What happened?” I all but yelled the last part at him.

  He held his hands up in front of himself to pacify me.

  “Don’t try that with me, mister. Start talking.”

  “Okay, all right.” He took my hands, and any levity in his voice completely disappeared. “It’s just a long story. And if I’m going to explain properly, I have to start at the beginning.”

  I nodded for him to continue.

  “So, after the battle with Satan, you just disappeared. As in, your body literally vanished from the pool of blood you’d been lying in. As you can imagine, I didn’t handle that well.”

  I could imagine. In fact, I imagined that even more things in that Artifacts Room got broken real fast. I kept my thoughts to myself as he continued.

  “At first I thought you’d been transported to Hell, but that’s when the Son explained to us that you were still alive. None of us knew, Audrey. We had no idea that you weren’t actually dead.”

  “Ha, you’re one to talk.”

  “Yeah, I’ll get to that in a moment.” He squeezed my hand and flashed a quick grin before continuing. “I calmed down marginally when I found out what had happened to you, but if you were alive, that meant we were separated. At the same time, I couldn’t begrudge you a life on Earth. I wanted you to live. I wanted to be happy you were alive. But I wanted to be with you too, and if we were in separate realms, that wasn’t going to happen for a long time. You can’t imagine how hard that time was on me.”

  “You’re kidding, right?” I lifted my eyebrows.

  He nodded slowly. “You’re right. If anyone can imagine how I felt, it’s you. As much as I wanted to be content with you having a full life on Earth, the thought of you having it without me gutted me. I didn’t last long before I started sneaking trips down to see you.”

  “You visited me when I was recovering? You were there?”

  He nodded. “Some of the time.”

  “Hold up, you broke the rules to see me?”

  He quirked an eyebrow at me. “Someday you’ll realize the depths of what I would do to be with you.”

  My insides melted, and my cheeks warmed. He brushed his thumb over one of them before speaking again.

  “Whenever I could sneak away, I’d come and visit you. I’d talk to you, but you couldn’t see or hear me. Being there but not able to interact w
ith you was its own form of torture. I watched you struggle to recover . . . but I watched you slowly move on as well.”

  I was shaking my head before he even completed the sentence. “That’s not what was happening. I just stuffed all my emotions down. I wasn’t dealing with anything during that time. Were you ever with me when I visited you? If so, that had to be super weird for you.”

  He took a deep breath. “I didn’t know I was in a coma either, Audrey. I didn’t know until the day you found me. When we walked into that room, I didn’t even recognize myself in that bed. It wasn’t until I started looking around and seeing familiar objects that the pieces started to fit together. And then of course when my mom walked in, I knew right away.”

  He chuckled, but how he found any of this funny, I didn’t know. “I was so surprised I actually knocked over a picture when she walked in.” Oh, so that was him, not me.

  “I went straight back to the realm when you left my room and demanded I be put back in my body. I’ll bet you can imagine how well that went over.”

  “Well, seeing as I spent weeks by your side without you waking up, I’m gonna guess not well.”

  “Right. When I was denied my demands, I went a little”—he held up his thumb and pointer finger about a millimeter apart—“ballistic for a while. I was there, you were there, we could actually be together again in the same realm, but for some reason I wasn’t allowed back.”

  “Is that . . . normal? Does what happened to us happen to everyone in a coma?”

  He shook his head. “No, we were the exception. That’s why no one would have even thought to guess it. Audrey, it’s also why we had powers others didn’t. It’s because part of us was still alive, and in the spiritual realm, that made us extra powerful.”

  “I just . . . I can’t wrap my brain around all this information. I have a million questions, but I don’t know if I can process it all right now.”

  “Okay, that makes sense. You tell me what you want to know.” He leaned back on his arms and pressed his lips together, his gaze steadily holding mine.

  “I guess I want to know how you’re alive. Your parents were going to take you off life support. Did they? How long have you been awake?”

  Looking him up and down, something occurred to me. He might be leaner than the Logan I knew in the afterlife, but he was a far cry from the one I’d spent time with in the hospital. To work his way back this far after four years in a coma, he must have been awake for months.

  Months where someone could have told me, but they didn’t.

  I jumped up. My legs were shaky. “How long, Logan? How long have you been awake while you left me to mourn your death?”

  A frown marred his handsome face, but he didn’t make a move toward me. “Audrey, you may not like this.”

  “How long, Logan?”

  He sighed and ran a hand down his face and back up into his short hair before meeting my gaze. “Seven months.”

  I gasped. Not long after I’d left the hospital. He’d been awake almost since the time I went home. And he was just now making himself known.

  I took an unsteady step backward.

  “Audrey, please let me explain.”

  But I didn’t. Instead, I turned and ran.

  41

  Better Together

  I forgot about the chill of the evening as I bolted from Logan. His voice was swallowed by the sound of the waves crashing, but he was no doubt giving chase. The ocean wind sent my hair flying into my face. Only after several minutes of sprinting did it occur to me that I hadn’t been caught.

  He’d let me go. Or maybe something else had happened.

  I whipped around, sweat dripping down my face, but I couldn’t see much in the failing light. The sun had descended below the horizon, and only the leftover brightness lit the beach.

  I turned in a circle and realized I had no idea where I was. There were no people around. A chill of fear skated up my spine.

  I’d run from Logan, but in the back of my mind I’d assumed he would catch me. He always had before.

  Darting my gaze left and right, I jogged back the way I’d come. I was still upset beyond reason that he’d been awake for so long without me knowing, but I’d been foolish to not let him explain. I also was incredibly stupid for having run so far.

  Nothing looked familiar. I swiveled my head back and forth as an irrational fear of being attacked overtook me. I was on the verge of hysterics when I slammed into a hard chest.

  We both went down in a tangle of limbs.

  “Don’t do that ever again.” There was a strong note of desperation in his voice. “Please, promise me you won’t do that again.”

  I pushed hair out of my face and stared down at Logan. Something to his left caught my eye, and I turned my head to see a plain silver cane lying discarded on the sand.

  Logan had come after me; he’d just been unable to catch up with me.

  “We don’t run from each other anymore, Audrey. Even when things get hard.” My attention snapped back to him, and I took in what he was saying. “Aren’t you tired of always running? I know I am.”

  He was so right. We’d run from each other for too long. We should have always been walking together.

  “Yeah, I am.”

  I clumsily shimmied off him and stood, watching as Logan glanced around before spotting the cane. He snuck a peek at me before grasping it and struggling to his feet.

  “As you can see, I’m not quite the same man I was before.” The lighting was so dim I might have misread it, but I caught something akin to shame in his eyes before he diverted his gaze.

  “Will you let me explain this time?”

  I nodded, and we started a slow trek back.

  A brisk pace was difficult for Logan, so I slowed my steps. I wasn’t sure if this was a regular thing for him or if my crashing into him exacerbated whatever physical limitations he was already dealing with.

  “I watched you during those weeks at my bedside. I saw you make the decision to stay there and keep vigil over that shell of mine, and I knew you’d do it for the rest of your life . . . and I didn’t want that for you. I would be ruining your life. I didn’t want to realize that at first, but it became clear to me eventually. So I went to the Creator . . . and asked him to end my mortal life.”

  My gasp was stolen by the wind, and Logan plowed on. “Of course, He was aware of the trips I’d made to see you. I knew He would be, it’s not like anything escapes His notice, but at the time I was making them, I honestly didn’t care. But He allowed them just the same.”

  I tried to catch Logan’s eye as we walked, but he remained focused on some unseen point in the distance. His jaw was clenched, and a muscle twitched on his cheek.

  Was the walk that painful for him? Perhaps he was angry at me? Or was rehashing these events just difficult?

  If the latter, I would have spared him from the pain if possible, but I needed to know. There was no way we could move forward without an explanation of how this was even possible. Especially now that he’d dropped the bomb on me of asking to die.

  My insides churned at the thought. Why would he do that? What had happened to his promise to be with me, no matter what? I needed to know it all.

  “What happened next?” I asked when the silence stretched and I was no longer sure Logan would continue.

  “You were there. You saw what happened next.”

  “You mean . . . that day?”

  He glossed over his conversation with the Creator. I almost pressed for details, but I realized that was Logan’s story. I’d hear it someday when he was ready—or not at all. But I didn’t have a right to force it out of him, no matter how badly I wanted to.

  “Yeah, that day.” He stopped walking and turned to me, grasping my upper arms gently but firmly. “Audrey, you were fierce that day. I know that will always be a horrible memory for you. And the way you were treated”—he looked over my shoulder before recapturing my gaze—“it took three hunters to keep me from throw
ing those people off you.”

  My eyes widened. It had never occurred to me that there might have been an unseen audience.

  “You . . . fought?”

  He cupped my cheek. “The first moment someone laid a hand on you, I couldn’t stay complacent anymore. I fought for you. But you . . . you not only fought for me, you fought for us.”

  “You were right there in front of me, even if I couldn’t reach you. From the first moment I realized it, I had hope. I thought it had to be for a reason.”

  I stepped forward and reached for him. The gusting wind had turned into an early evening breeze, balmy but cooling. His skin was chilled until the heat from my hands warmed him.

  “I had hope . . . until the moment I was told you were gone.”

  Pain lanced through my heart at the memory of the crushing agony I’d felt all those months ago and a little bit every day since. My pain-filled emotions must have reflected on my face because Logan pulled me toward him with both arms.

  “I’m so sorry. Everything I did . . . everything I’ve done . . . I thought every decision was to protect you. But so many of those choices just added to your suffering. I’m not perfect, Audrey.”

  I huffed a weak laugh with my face buried in his chest.

  Turning to lay a cheek on him, I asked, “What happened next?”

  He leaned forward and nuzzled the hair hanging over my neck, inhaling my scent.

  After that sprint, I was a little worried I was veering on the ripe side, even though the sweat had already dried from my body.

  “They changed their minds.”

  “Your parents?”

  “Yeah. I mean they still thought you were completely insane.”

  I pressed a fist into his gut, and he let out a lighthearted laugh.

  “Don’t worry, that was more my dad than my mom; she thinks you’re great.”

  “Even now?”

  “Especially now.” He pushed my hair behind my ear and pressed a kiss to my neck.

  “Are you trying to distract me?” If so, it was kind of working.

  “You’re the distraction, love.” He placed another kiss to the spot and then picked me up and set me away from him.