ainhoa

A tear falls down your cheeks. You don’t answer, but your hand squeezes Joel’s hand tightly.

“Listen to me,” Joel says, leaning into your ear.

“If you marry another man and forget our past, my soul won’t rest. I will come back from my grave in the middle of the night, not to scare you but to hold you. I will be the wind that blows at your window because not even death itself can put out the fire I feel for you.”

Joel pulls you to his chest, staying in silence as the last rays of the sun hid on the horizon, and the orange color turns into a clear darkness settling around you.

Neither of you moves. The distant lights of Jackson glow faintly below, scattered over the earth as if the world had turned upside down.

Joel's thumb brushes across your knuckles, back and forth as if looking for a bit of warmth in his friction with your skin.

It is a habit he had developed with you and he had carried for years.

You are the safe place he needs to go to every time he craved it.

"Do remember that cabin?" he asks suddenly.

You laugh softly. "The one with the broken roof?"

"The one with the broken roof." He repeats.

"It collapsed while we were sleeping." You add, a sad smile appears on your face.

You turn to look at him, and the same smile lingers on his face, but it doesn't quite reach his eyes.

"We nearly froze to death that night," he says, smiling at the memory, letting out a quiet chuckle that ends up fading as quickly as it came.

For a moment, he seems lost in the memory, and you study his profile in the fading light of the moon now.

The scar near his temple, the lines beside his eyes, and the silver beginning to spread through his hair. Years ago, those things would have frightened you. They were reminders that time was moving forward.

Now, they're reminders that time had chosen to spare him.

Joel notices you staring. "What?"

"Nothing,” You shrug, smiling “just looking at you."

His gaze softens and silence follows. It feels different.

Charged.

"You know what I regret?" he asks, breaking the silence again.

You raise an eyebrow. "Only one thing?"

A quiet laugh escapes from his lips, "No. Just the one that's bothering me tonight."

The smile on your face fades. Joel rarely talks about regrets. He rarely talks about his feelings.

Most of the time he has been a reserved man that has spent years burying regrets beneath silence.

"What is it?"

He looks down at your joined hands, and for a moment, you think he won't answer.

"All the time I wasted."

You frown. "Wasted?"

"Before you."

The words catch your breath.

"I’m not talking about us meeting." Joel says when he notices your expression.

"Then what are you talking about?"

His jaw tightens. "The years after."

"The years after what?"

He doesn't answer immediately, and the darkness embraces you as you look at Jackson from afar.

A place built from second chances, a place neither of you ever expected to find and settle.

"The years I spent believing I had nothing left to lose." His voice is nothing but a whisper at this point.

You stare at him because Joel never talks about himself like this.

"You had plenty to lose."

"Yeah, I know.” The answer comes too quickly as he had thought.

His thumb continues its slow path across your knuckles. "And I didn't realize it until it was already mine."

Your chest tightens, Joel finally turns toward you, and there is something strange in his expression.

There is no sadness beneath his eyes, not even fear, but something soft that made your heart hurt.

"If I got another twenty years with you, I'd still complain it wasn't enough."

You let out a shaky laugh. "Twenty years?"

"Fifty, then."

"Now you're dreaming." You say, voice breaking.

"Maybe."

His smile appears again, it’s barely a smirk. That kind of smirk that vanishes if you look at it too closely.

You reach up and brush a strand of gray hair away from his forehead.

"Are you planning on turning into an old man?"

Joel's eyes linger on yours, longer than they should, and it makes your stomach twist.

"I wanted to."

So, you lean forward and press your forehead against his, to feel his breath on your face.

And the world continues moving around you, time continues stealing your breath.

Life goes on as if it always will.

Joel's hand finds the back of your neck, the calluses on his palm and fingers scrape gently against your skin.

A familiar touch, the same one that has followed you through years of winters and summers, in the middle of gunfire and storms, through every version of yourself that existed before and right now in this very moment.

You close your eyes.

"You know what your problem is?" you whisper, on his face.

"What?" Joel says and lets out a low hum.

"You think too much." A laugh escapes him.

And for a second, it sounds like the Joel only you know.

The one who insists he'll be fine when he is bleeding, the one who is always strong.

"I learned from the best." You shake your head.

Joel smiles, but the smile fades.

Not suddenly, slowly and it hurts.

"Are you scared?" he asks.

The question catches you off guard. His eyes remain on yours, and you stare right back at him, too close your nose still brushes, and your throat tightens.

"I am so scared.”

"Me too." He confesses.

The confession breaks you because who they are coming from.

Joel has always carried fear differently, locked behind clenched teeth and silent.

You can't remember the last time he admitted it aloud.

"What scares you?" you ask softly.

His gaze drifts toward the horizon. Toward the darkness stretching beyond Jackson.

Toward something only, he can see.

"Leaving things unfinished."

Your heart shatters.

Joel swallows, and then he looks back at you. "And leaving people behind."

You want to tell him he's being ridiculous, that neither of you is going anywhere, and that you'll both be sitting on this hill twenty years from now arguing about whose knees hurt worse.

The words reach your tongue.

But they stay there because something in his eyes stops you, and you realized there’s nothing you can do to fool death.

You take his face in your hands and you hold him as if you can anchor him in here with you.

As if love alone can keep the world from taking what it always takes.

Joel closes his eyes and leans into your touch. A sigh comes out of him when he opens them again and looks at you with such tenderness that it hurts.

"There you are," he murmurs.

You frown. "What?"

A weak smile touches his lips. "Just wanted to see you."

He reaches for your hand, bringing it to his lips and he presses a kiss on your knuckles.

And an unbearable feeling grows inside you.

Because time is slipping through your fingers and this moment is becoming a memory even as it happens.

And Joel pulls you closer, his forehead resting on your temple and his lips on your cheeks.

You close your eyes at the feeling, at the weight of him, at his scent.

At his colder skin.

And when you open your eyes, the cold bits your face.

It seems like the world around you is blurred, and the stars are suddenly gone. The sky above you is pale and colorless, carrying the first hints of dawn.

The grass beneath your cheek is damp with humidity. Your neck aches, so you sit up, and the blanket over your shoulders slides down your shoulders.

For one foolish, fleeting second, you reach beside you expecting to find warm and Joel’s sleepy sigh in the morning.

But your hand finds nothing but flat grass under your touch, and the morning greets you with silence.

A sharp breath catches in your throat, and your gaze lifts up to the stone behind you.

Joel Miller.

A loving father.

A loving brother.

Joel died.

Joel lived once. Yes, in the past tense. Everything he was, everything he did was written in carved fragments over a stone.

And yet they held an entire universe for you.

For one foolish, fleeting second, you reached beside you, expecting to find warmth and Joel's sleepy sigh greeting the morning.

But your hand found nothing except flattened grass beneath your fingertips.

The morning greeted you with silence.

A sharp breath caught in your throat, and your gaze lifted toward the stone behind you.

Joel Miller.

A loving father.

A loving brother.

Joel died.

Joel lived once.

Yes, in the past tense.

Everything he was, everything he did, had been reduced to carved fragments upon a stone.

And yet they held an entire universe for you.

Your eyes remained fixed on his name.

Joel Miller.

The letters blurred as the tears gathered in your eyes.

You remembered the first time he told you his name because now, reading it felt sacred.

A name that had once belonged to a strange man with brown eyes who looked for you when nightmares woke him in the dark.

And the stone did not tell any of those stories. It did not mention the way his eyes softened whenever he looked at the people he loved.

Your fingers brushed against the engraved letters.

Cold, Joel had never been still.

A broken laugh escaped from your lips. The sound startled you; you had forgotten what laughter sounded like after he was gone.

You still remembered the feeling of his arms around you and his beard scrapping on your face.

And you still remembered how he used to look at you, as if loving you had been the easiest thing he had ever done.

You let your forehead rest on the cold stone, letting his name press into your skin like deep cuts

“If you can hear me,” you whispered into the silent morning, “please, don't leave me alone out here.”

But there was no answer, just the sigh of the wind.

But you also knew him. You knew the fierce and stubborn soul of Joel Miller. He wouldn't just stay carved in stone. If love could cross the border of the dead, you knew his ghost would be standing right here in the shadows, arms open, refusing to ever let you go.

A tear falls down your cheeks. You don’t answer, but your hand squeezes Joel’s hand tightly.

“Listen to me,” Joel says, leaning into your ear.

“If you marry another man and forget our past, my soul won’t rest. I will come back from my grave in the middle of the night, not to scare you but to hold you. I will be the wind that blows at your window because not even death itself can put out the fire I feel for you.”

Joel pulls you to his chest, staying in silence as the last rays of the sun hid on the horizon, and the orange color turns into a clear darkness settling around you.

Neither of you moves. The distant lights of Jackson glow faintly below, scattered over the earth as if the world had turned upside down.

Joel's thumb brushes across your knuckles, back and forth as if looking for a bit of warmth in his friction with your skin.

It is a habit he had developed with you and he had carried for years.

You are the safe place he needs to go to every time he craved it.

"Do remember that cabin?" he asks suddenly.

You laugh softly. "The one with the broken roof?"

"The one with the broken roof." He repeats.

"It collapsed while we were sleeping." You add, a sad smile appears on your face.

You turn to look at him, and the same smile lingers on his face, but it doesn't quite reach his eyes.

"We nearly froze to death that night," he says, smiling at the memory, letting out a quiet chuckle that ends up fading as quickly as it came.

For a moment, he seems lost in the memory, and you study his profile in the fading light of the moon now.

The scar near his temple, the lines beside his eyes, and the silver beginning to spread through his hair. Years ago, those things would have frightened you. They were reminders that time was moving forward.

Now, they're reminders that time had chosen to spare him.

Joel notices you staring. "What?"

"Nothing,” You shrug, smiling “just looking at you."

His gaze softens and silence follows. It feels different.

Charged.

"You know what I regret?" he asks, breaking the silence again.

You raise an eyebrow. "Only one thing?"

A quiet laugh escapes from his lips, "No. Just the one that's bothering me tonight."

The smile on your face fades. Joel rarely talks about regrets. He rarely talks about his feelings.

Most of the time he has been a reserved man that has spent years burying regrets beneath silence.

"What is it?"

He looks down at your joined hands, and for a moment, you think he won't answer.

"All the time I wasted."

You frown. "Wasted?"

"Before you."

The words catch your breath.

"I’m not talking about us meeting." Joel says when he notices your expression.

"Then what are you talking about?"

His jaw tightens. "The years after."

"The years after what?"

He doesn't answer immediately, and the darkness embraces you as you look at Jackson from afar.

A place built from second chances, a place neither of you ever expected to find and settle.

"The years I spent believing I had nothing left to lose." His voice is nothing but a whisper at this point.

You stare at him because Joel never talks about himself like this.

"You had plenty to lose."

"Yeah, I know.” The answer comes too quickly as he had thought.

His thumb continues its slow path across your knuckles. "And I didn't realize it until it was already mine."

Your chest tightens, Joel finally turns toward you, and there is something strange in his expression.

There is no sadness beneath his eyes, not even fear, but something soft that made your heart hurt.

"If I got another twenty years with you, I'd still complain it wasn't enough."

You let out a shaky laugh. "Twenty years?"

"Fifty, then."

"Now you're dreaming." You say, voice breaking.

"Maybe."

His smile appears again, it’s barely a smirk. That kind of smirk that vanishes if you look at it too closely.

You reach up and brush a strand of gray hair away from his forehead.

"Are you planning on turning into an old man?"

Joel's eyes linger on yours, longer than they should, and it makes your stomach twist.

"I wanted to."

So, you lean forward and press your forehead against his, to feel his breath on your face.

And the world continues moving around you, time continues stealing your breath.

Life goes on as if it always will.

Joel's hand finds the back of your neck, the calluses on his palm and fingers scrape gently against your skin.

A familiar touch, the same one that has followed you through years of winters and summers, in the middle of gunfire and storms, through every version of yourself that existed before and right now in this very moment.

You close your eyes.

"You know what your problem is?" you whisper, on his face.

"What?" Joel says and lets out a low hum.

"You think too much." A laugh escapes him.

And for a second, it sounds like the Joel only you know.

The one who insists he'll be fine when he is bleeding, the one who is always strong.

"I learned from the best." You shake your head.

Joel smiles, but the smile fades.

Not suddenly, slowly and it hurts.

"Are you scared?" he asks.

The question catches you off guard. His eyes remain on yours, and you stare right back at him, too close your nose still brushes, and your throat tightens.

"I am so scared.”

"Me too." He confesses.

The confession breaks you because who they are coming from.

Joel has always carried fear differently, locked behind clenched teeth and silent.

You can't remember the last time he admitted it aloud.

"What scares you?" you ask softly.

His gaze drifts toward the horizon. Toward the darkness stretching beyond Jackson.

Toward something only, he can see.

"Leaving things unfinished."

Your heart shatters.

Joel swallows, and then he looks back at you. "And leaving people behind."

You want to tell him he's being ridiculous, that neither of you is going anywhere, and that you'll both be sitting on this hill twenty years from now arguing about whose knees hurt worse.

The words reach your tongue.

But they stay there because something in his eyes stops you, and you realized there’s nothing you can do to fool death.

You take his face in your hands and you hold him as if you can anchor him in here with you.

As if love alone can keep the world from taking what it always takes.

Joel closes his eyes and leans into your touch. A sigh comes out of him when he opens them again and looks at you with such tenderness that it hurts.

"There you are," he murmurs.

You frown. "What?"

A weak smile touches his lips. "Just wanted to see you."

He reaches for your hand, bringing it to his lips and he presses a kiss on your knuckles.

And an unbearable feeling grows inside you.

Because time is slipping through your fingers and this moment is becoming a memory even as it happens.

And Joel pulls you closer, his forehead resting on your temple and his lips on your cheeks.

You close your eyes at the feeling, at the weight of him, at his scent.

At his colder skin.

And when you open your eyes, the cold bits your face.

It seems like the world around you is blurred, and the stars are suddenly gone. The sky above you is pale and colorless, carrying the first hints of dawn.

The grass beneath your cheek is damp with humidity. Your neck aches, so you sit up, and the blanket over your shoulders slides down your shoulders.

For one foolish, fleeting second, you reach beside you expecting to find warm and Joel’s sleepy sigh in the morning.

But your hand finds nothing but flat grass under your touch, and the morning greets you with silence.

A sharp breath catches in your throat, and your gaze lifts up to the stone behind you.

Joel Miller.

A loving father.

A loving brother.

Joel died.

Joel lived once. Yes, in the past tense. Everything he was, everything he did was written in carved fragments over a stone.

And yet they held an entire universe for you.

For one foolish, fleeting second, you reached beside you, expecting to find warmth and Joel's sleepy sigh greeting the morning.

But your hand found nothing except flattened grass beneath your fingertips.

The morning greeted you with silence.

A sharp breath caught in your throat, and your gaze lifted toward the stone behind you.

Joel Miller.

A loving father.

A loving brother.

Joel died.

Joel lived once.

Yes, in the past tense.

Everything he was, everything he did, had been reduced to carved fragments upon a stone.

And yet they held an entire universe for you.

Your eyes remained fixed on his name.

Joel Miller.

The letters blurred as the tears gathered in your eyes.

You remembered the first time he told you his name because now, reading it felt sacred.

A name that had once belonged to a strange man with brown eyes who looked for you when nightmares woke him in the dark.

And the stone did not tell any of those stories. It did not mention the way his eyes softened whenever he looked at the people he loved.

Your fingers brushed against the engraved letters.

Cold, Joel had never been still.

A broken laugh escaped from your lips. The sound startled you; you had forgotten what laughter sounded like after he was gone.

You still remembered the feeling of his arms around you and his beard scrapping on your face.

And you still remembered how he used to look at you, as if loving you had been the easiest thing he had ever done.

You let your forehead rest on the cold stone, letting his name press into your skin like deep cuts

“If you can hear me,” you whispered into the silent morning, “please, don't leave me alone out here.”

But there was no answer, just the sigh of the wind.

But you also knew him. You knew the fierce and stubborn soul of Joel Miller. He wouldn't just stay carved in stone. If love could cross the border of the dead, you knew his ghost would be standing right here in the shadows, arms open, refusing to ever let you go.