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Mark Sloan was sure he was dreaming for two reasons. First: he wasn’t in a stretcher and waiting to die. Second: the person standing in front of him couldn’t be, in fact, standing in front of him. Because he had seen her die. He could still recall the exact time when her heart had stopped beating.
“Lexie.”
She smiled at him and the dimples of her smile were exactly like he remembered them.
“Mark.” Her ponytail swished from side to side. “You missed me?”
He stumbled forward and enveloped her in his arms, against his chest, just feeling the familiar warmness of Alexandra C. Grey seep through the fabrics and cling to his cold body. Something kindled inside him, stirring and purring and blinking out of its daze.
He closed his eyes and breathed her in, clean and bright and tropical, and she giggled into the crook of his neck. Lithe arms snaked around his waist and held him close. One way or another, he was home.
“Lexie,” Sloan said again. He meant to whisper it, like a furtive word of adoration to an earthly god, but his voice broke on the word the same way a twig might snap under one’s foot.
“Mark,” she whispered, her breath gliding over his skin, “is something wrong?”
“Do you even know,” he asked, “how much I love you?”
She drew back and looked into his eyes, teasing. “Well, for starters, do you?”
“I do, yes, and…God, I’m so sorry it took me this long.” He cupped her face with both hands and stared into her eyes. “Lexie, I’m just—I love you. I love you so much. We’re meant to be.
“And you were right. About everything. But mostly about this: it does feel good to say it. That I love you, I mean. Because I do. Lexie, I love you. I never did really try to move on and Julia was great but she wasn’t you,” he confessed, cradling her under his chin and treasuring the way her breath tickled his throat. “She never stood a chance against you and—Oh, my God, I’m a horrible human being for doing this to her. To you. To us. I’m so sorry.”
The words flowed out of his mouth like a torrent. Every syllable that catapulted out of his lips was one less cross for him to bear. He was stripping himself bare, giving Lexie what little he had that was worthy of her, hoping for absolution. Forgive his sins, forgive him, because he didn’t know what he was supposed to do if she didn’t.
“But you’re so young and I wanted grown-up things. Old-man things. I wanted kids and a backyard full of flowers and, don’t you dare laugh at my American dream, I wanted a dog. Two dogs, if we couldn’t settle for just one. I wanted all those things, all of them, with you. I wanted you to be at the centre of it.”
Sloan tightened his embrace and looked up at the sky, or whatever it was that floated above them, around them, white and pure in its stillness. He might be crying.
“You’re beautiful and I miss you so much, but that doesn’t even come close to how I feel about you. English is too simple a language to be able to fully express my feelings for you.”
Lexie was pressed against him, her body both tense and lax in his arms, trying to hold her emotions back. She shifted and craned her neck, looking up at him with speechless awe. It wasn’t to last. Within seconds, she blurted out the first silly thing that came to her mind and he loved her for it.
“Well, try another language.”
“But that’s the problem,” Sloan said gravelly, fighting the urge to brush their lips together. “Languages didn’t plan for you.”
Her smile could melt the universe. “They didn’t?”
“No,” he whispered, leaning closer, his tone low and conspiring. “How could they plan for you if you’re so out of this world not even God saw you coming?”
Lexie gave a breathless laugh, startled by his words. Her soft brown eyes twinkled up at him like a thousand stars in a moonless night and her smile grew ten times stronger. Forget the universe, she could melt space and time if she so wished.
“Dr Sloan, you’re like Casanova reloaded.”
“And I don’t even know what you are,” he said honestly. Because, really, he didn’t. Was she a ghost? A vision? An illusion of his dying mind? “Only that you’re beyond perfect and you’re mine.”
“I’m yours?”
He nuzzled her neck. “Yep.”
“I guess we can agree on that.” She grinned against his ear. “I’ll be yours forever, no matter what.”
“I’d like that very, very much, Dr Grey.” He trailed kisses up her jawline. “And you can have me—if you’d like.”
“I would,” Lexie agreed. “I would. A lot.”
She searched his lips and gave him a long, deep kiss that left them both slightly out of breath when they finally broke apart. He opened his eyes first and his gaze trailed the quivering curve of her closed eyelids, small miracles worth worshipping. Then it was simply sliding down the barely-there freckles of her nose until he reached the arches of her lovely lips, tender and sweet. He wanted to breathe life into those lips, fill her with his heartbeat and never let her go.
Her eyes opened, and they were large and sad and strikingly beautiful.
“I’ll be waiting for you.”
“I won’t be long,” Sloan said. “I promise.”
Lexie’s smile turned rueful. “I know.”