Page 43 of Don’t Let Me Go

The morning sun, bright and relentless, streams through my window. I can already tell it’s gonna be another sweltering day.

Even so, Riley shivers in my arms and pulls the bedcovers around us tighter. Neither of us can shake the chill from our bones.

“What the hell is happening to us?” he asks, his teeth chattering.

“I don’t know.”

When I woke up this morning, cold and confused on my bedroom floor, I found Riley lying next to me, unconscious. His skin

was like ice, so I carried him to my bed and wrapped myself around him until the color returned to his cheeks and he opened

his eyes.

It took him a full minute to understand where he was. Once he did, he immediately started telling me about his dream. A dream

where he and I were Vikings, where a man named Erik the Red summoned a witch to predict the future, and where the two of us

froze to death in a blizzard.

The more Riley told me, the more I felt like I was losing my mind. Not because I didn’t believe him but because I already

knew everything he was going to say. Because I’d had the same dream. The exact same dream. Down to the smallest detail.

Two identical dreams.

“Maybe we both saw the same movie and it got stuck in our brains?” I suggest.

Riley scoffs. “I’ve never seen a movie about gay Vikings. Have you?”

I shake my head.

“You don’t have some medical condition, do you?” I ask. “I mean, nothing like this has happened to you before, right?”

“I was literally about to ask you the same thing.”

“So the fainting and the dreams? They’re new?”

“Yeah,” Riley says. “They didn’t start until...”

“Until when?”

Riley won’t meet my eyes. “Until I met you.”

A shiver steals down my spine, but I force myself to ignore it.

“Maybe the dreams are—shit, what’s the word? Coach used it all the time. When you’re sick but it’s all in your head?”

“Psychosomatic?” Riley suggests.

“Yeah, psychosomatic. We’ve both been under a lot of stress. Maybe the fainting and the nightmares are just our bodies’ way

of coping.”

“That doesn’t explain how we could have the same dream.”

No, it doesn’t. “So what do you think is happening?” I ask.

Riley opens his mouth, then seems to think better of it. I watch him wrestle with his thoughts before surrendering with a

defeated sigh. “Maybe... maybe they’re not dreams.”

“What do you mean?”

“Okay, don’t laugh. But what happened last night, it didn’t feel like a dream. It felt more like—a memory. Like I was remembering

something that happened.”

“How could it be something that happened?”

Riley shakes his head. “I don’t know. But that dream I had about us in Pompeii felt the same way. It was like I was remembering

something. Or reliving something.”

“Reliving?” I can’t help laughing. “What? You mean like a past life?”

Riley lifts his head off my chest and looks into my eyes. “Yeah.”

I want to laugh again, but something in Riley’s expression stops me. “You’re serious?”

“I know. It’s crazy,” he concedes. “But think about it. Ever since we met, we’ve had this connection, right? At the time,

I thought it was just a really intense crush. But maybe it’s something more. Maybe we feel like we’ve known each other forever

because...”

“Because?”

“Because we have.”

Riley holds my gaze, his piercing green eyes practically daring me to tell him he’s wrong. But he has to be wrong. What he’s

suggesting is impossible.

“That’s a really sweet idea,” I begin, trying to select my words carefully so as not to hurt his feelings.

“But?”

“But past lives? That’s kind of a stretch, isn’t it? I mean, you said you wrote a paper on Pompeii for school, right? And

I’ve watched literally every movie there is about World War Two. It makes sense that stuff would bleed over into our dreams.”

“I’ve never heard of Brattahlid,” Riley counters. “Or that other place, the one in Iceland.”

“Húsavík.”

“Húsavík! Exactly. I wouldn’t even know how to spell that. But I remember it. I remember the farm we grew up on. I remember the taste of the porridge that your mother used to make. I remember the

smell of burning houses when the village was destroyed. At least...” Riley sighs in frustration. “At least I think I do.”

To my surprise, I find myself nodding in agreement. Because as much as I’d like to deny it, I remember those things too. All

of them. And that shouldn’t be possible.

“Okay, so what exactly are you suggesting?” I ask as my resistance to his theory begins to waver. “That we knew each other in a past life? Multiple past lives? And, what, we keep getting reincarnated?”

Riley falls into a thoughtful silence. “Do you remember what that witch said when we were being banished? She said, ‘When

one song ends, another always begins.’?”

“And you think we’re the song?”

“Maybe.”

I shake my head. I can’t believe I’m even considering this. “But why us? What makes us special?”

“I don’t know. Maybe we’re just—” Riley stops himself and blushes.

“Maybe we’re just what?”

“Soulmates.”

The word surprises me. I wasn’t expecting it. And yet as soon as I hear it, something about it sounds undeniably right .

“I know that’s a bit intense,” Riley confesses with a shy smile. “But honestly, that’s how I feel about you, Jackson. Before

you moved to Orlando, my life was—I don’t know how to describe it. It just felt?.?.?.? wrong .”

“What do you mean, ‘wrong’?”

“I don’t know. Everything just felt off . Like something was missing. Or incomplete. It was like?.?.?.?like that video I sent you, the one about the kid who was color-blind.

Do you remember? He could see fine, but everything was brown and gray.”

I nod. “I remember.”

“That’s what my life was like. It was fine but colorless. Only I didn’t know it was colorless until you came along. Then suddenly,

everywhere I looked there were rainbows. Which is such a fucking gay thing to say. But it’s true. You filled my world with

color, Jackson. You made everything feel alive. You made me feel alive. It was like, being with you, I was finally living the life I was supposed to lead. If that’s not a soulmate, I don’t know what it is.”

Riley’s words leave me speechless. Everything he’s saying about the way I make him feel, I understand. More than he knows.

“Sorry,” he says, withdrawing into himself. “That was a lot. I shouldn’t have—”

“I feel the same.”

Riley looks at me in surprise. “You do?”

“I told you when we first met that I felt like I was living the wrong life. I never knew why until I met you. Then it was

obvious.” I slip my hand into his. “Any life I had would feel wrong if you weren’t in it.”

Riley breaks into a smile that I swear must come straight from his soul. The beauty of it—of him—takes my breath away. I wrap

my arms around him and pull him into a long, aching kiss. Whatever questions we have about past lives and reincarnation will

have to wait. We have more important things to attend to now.

Riley climbs on top of me and devours my mouth with kisses. The hunger of his lips against mine makes me desperate to taste

every inch of him. I’m almost feverish with desire.

Thankfully, I’m not so far gone that I don’t hear the very loud and very abrupt knocking on my bedroom door or my aunt’s voice

calling, “Jackson, are you up?”

“Shit!” Riley gasps, scrambling off me and diving under the covers.

I’m 90 percent certain I locked the door last night, but just in case I didn’t, I bunch the bedspread over my groin in an

effort to conceal my very obvious erection.

“I’m up!” I answer, the irony of that phrase not lost on me.

“I hope I didn’t wake you,” Aunt Rachel apologizes. Her tone is innocent and oblivious, but it isn’t fooling anyone. I can practically hear the smirk on her face. “I just wanted to see what you’d like for your birthday breakfast. Since we had waffles yesterday, I was thinking omelets?”

“Sounds great,” I reply. “I’ll come to the kitchen in a few minutes, okay?”

“Okay.” My aunt pauses. “Will anyone else be joining us?”

Riley turns so pink he looks sunburned and buries his face in my shoulder.

“Yes, Aunt Rachel, Riley will be joining us.”

“Oh? Riley’s still here? What a nice surprise!” she exclaims, not sounding at all surprised. “Well, breakfast should be on

the table in about twenty minutes. I’m also planning to do a load of laundry if your sheets—”

“Oh my God, Aunt Rach, go away!” I shout. As lucky as I am to have a sex-positive aunt, this conversation is about to end

me.

“Okay, kiddo, see you in a few minutes.”

Aunt Rachel’s footsteps fade down the hall, and I shake my head in exasperation. Then I turn to Riley, who’s cringing so hard,

he looks like he’s about to curl up into a tight little ball of shame.

“That was mortifying !” He groans into my shoulder.

“It’s fine,” I assure him. “Don’t worry about Aunt Rachel.”

“I’m never going to be able to look her in the face again!”

With a laugh, I wrap Riley in my arms and try to soothe his embarrassment with a few chaste kisses. My aunt’s unsubtle but

totally effective bit of cockblocking has definitely killed the mood. But I don’t mind. It feels good to just lie here with

Riley in my arms.

Maybe it’s on account of it being my birthday, or maybe it’s on account of knowing I’ll be spending that birthday with someone

as incredible as Riley, but right now I feel like I don’t have a care in the world. In fact, in this moment, I’m so ridiculously

happy that I can almost forget about our crazy dreams.

Almost.

“Do you really think we had past lives?” I ask, my mind still wrestling to understand what happened last night. I can just about swallow

the idea that Riley and I are soulmates. But reincarnation? That’s magic. Fantasy. It’s not real life.

“I don’t know,” Riley sighs. “Maybe not? But something weird is definitely going on.”

“Oh, for sure,” I agree. “But there has to be a logical explanation, right?”

Riley doesn’t say anything, and we sink into silence.

It’s wild to think that an hour ago, I woke up shivering on the bedroom floor, dazed and disoriented and half out of my mind

with panic. Now I can hear Aunt Rachel banging pans around in the kitchen. I can smell bacon sizzling. Nothing about this

moment feels strange or supernatural. If anything, it feels normal. Blissfully and boringly normal.

Then Riley shudders in my arms.

“What’s the matter?” I ask.

“Sorry. I was thinking about our dreams.”

“What about them?”

Riley hesitates. “Well, if we do have past lives, and if the dreams we’ve been having aren’t dreams but actual memories of

those lives, then...”

“Then what?”

Riley lifts his face off my chest and studies me carefully. “What do you think it means that we always die at the end?”