Andrea still loves you

She lingered on the edge of the bed, her body turned toward me but her face angled away, as though she couldn’t quite let herself meet my eyes for long. My chest was tight, too tight for the lungs I had inherited, and each breath rasped out of me with a sound that wasn’t mine.

Andrea tucked a strand of honey-gold hair behind her ear, her fingers trembling. “I don’t even know who I’m talking to right now,” she whispered.

“It’s me,” I rasped, leaning closer, the nightgown sliding down my shoulder. The satin stuck against sweat. “Steve. Always me.”

Her eyes flicked there—at that pale shoulder, the freckled décolletage that was not hers but her mother’s—and she flinched, as though the sight stung her. “But it’s her skin,” she said, voice breaking. “Her smell. Her voice. I can’t look without—” She cut herself off, biting her lip.

“Without what?” I demanded, too sharp, my voice cracking in that husky register. “Without remembering her? Without hating me? Or without wanting me?”

Her breath hitched. The silence in the room was unbearable, thick with grief and static.

Andrea’s eyes locked onto mine, raw and wet. “Don’t say things like that,” she snapped. But she didn’t move away. Her thigh pressed against mine through the sheets.

I reached, almost against my own will, and covered her hand with mine. The wrinkled skin, the gold nails. Ugly. Alien. Yet when her warmth seeped into me, it was the only thing that felt real.

She stared at our joined hands, frozen. Then she pulled in a shuddering breath. “You don’t know what you’re doing to me.”

“Yes, I do,” I whispered. “I’m doing it to myself too.”

Her gaze darted up, frantic, searching my face for traces of her husband behind her mother’s stretched features. And for a flicker, I saw it—her shoulders eased, her lips parted. She saw me.

I leaned in, trembling, until her breath brushed against mine. My heart hammered so loudly I thought it might tear through this borrowed ribcage.

Then she kissed me.

A jolt of fire tore through me. Her mouth was soft, familiar, but the lips I gave her back were not. Too plump, too painted by someone else’s years. Still—she kissed me harder, as if forcing herself to remember.

I gasped into her, the husky croak making it obscene. Our noses bumped wrong, unfamiliar. She pulled away sharply, hand clamped over her mouth, eyes wide with horror.

“God—Steve—I can’t,” she panted, shaking her head.

“You can,” I begged, grabbing her wrist, feeling her pulse hammering under her skin. “Because I’m still yours. Because you still want me. Tell me you don’t.”

Tears spilled down her cheeks. “It’s like kissing her ghost,” she sobbed. “Like I’m betraying both of you.”

I pulled her against me anyway, arms clumsy, satin rustling, breasts pressing up between us. The humiliation scalded me, but I needed her. Needed to anchor myself in something real before I drowned in this body’s gravity.

“Andrea,” I murmured into her hair. My voice was rough, alien, but my desperation was mine. “Please… I don’t know how to live like this unless I have you.”

Her nails dug into my arm. She was shaking as badly as I was. For a long moment she didn’t move, caught between revulsion and ache. Then—slowly, reluctantly—her head dropped against my shoulder.

“I don’t know if I can love you like this,” she whispered. “But I can’t let you go either.”

Her tears bled warm through the satin. I held her, chest heaving, fighting the urge to kiss her again.