“You saved her life,” Larry said. “You made the difference.”

Hunt moved to the side of Ava’s bed and slid his hand beneath her palm. Before, she would have clasped it immediately. The limp feel of it against his skin scared him, but Elliot said she would be reborn, and Hunt wanted to believe, so much, that she would wake up and be all that she had been.

Chapter 18

Ava was drifting. She was seeing and feeling and hearing, but in a place she’d never been before. Movement was without effort, like floating, and she was unaware of being in a body.

In this place, she understood.

Everything.

The why of it.

The how of it.

And that there was no end to it.

The beauty of it was beyond description, and the sounds…unexplainable, but mesmerizing…leading her, pulling her along by some invisible rope.

She was curious, and yet there was a sense of having left something undone.

She was surrounded by a blue so pale it almost looked white, and then it began vibrating, and the lights began to change into a thousand different hues of colors she’d never seen.

All of a sudden, there was a bright light before her, and within the light a voice—a voice so beautiful and so loving that she wanted to lie down within the sound of it and just be.

You came too soon. You are not at the end of your path. It is your choice…you can stay…or you can return. Look into the light and choose.

The light grew brighter and wider, and then she saw all that was before her, and the multitudes awaiting her, and it was so beautiful she could not look away.

Then the light flickered, and she was looking down into a room where a woman lay upon a bed. She saw two people standing beside the bed, and then recognized them as her mother and father, holding each other and crying. And then she saw a man holding the hand of the woman in the bed, but she could not see his face.

As Ava began moving closer, a terrible feeling of dread began sweeping through her. There was a familiarity in the long, dark hair strewn across the pillow, then the curve of the woman’s cheek, and then the dark wings of her brows.

She was beside the man now. She could see his face. She knew him. She’d known him forever.

It’s Hunt. And the woman in the bed is me! What’s happening… What’s happening? Why don’t I wake up? No. No. No. I don’t want to die.

And all of a sudden she was back in the body and struggling to find herself within it again. Arms…legs…a heartbeat…pain. Feeling lost. Feeling scared.