Free The Color of Heaven - 09 - The Color of Time by Julianne MacLean Page A

pulled me close, into his arms. I sank to my knees, and he dropped with me to the ground, still holding me tight.

Chapter Twenty

    August 5, 2015

    I sat down on a large rock along the shoreline, looked out over the whitecaps on the water and tried to collect myself. I had been working so hard to move on. It had been years since I’d let myself relive all the horrific details of that night almost fifteen years ago.
    The truth was…something in me had died that night with Ethan, for I’d never truly recovered from the loss of him. I’d never fallen in love again. Eventually, as the years passed, I’d merely fallen into a series of brief, unhealthy relationships with men who were unattainable. They were either married or players, and I usually met them in the bar where I worked. My sister, Jenn, believed I chose to avoid men who were decent and kind because I was afraid of genuinely becoming attached to someone—and eventually suffering another devastating loss.
    Maybe she was right.
    My therapist suggested something else—that I didn’t want to love again because I would feel as if I were betraying Ethan’s memory, and I felt guilty enough as it was for what happened. I blamed myself for his death, for if I hadn’t pushed him so hard to see inside his home and for him to stand up to his father, they might not have argued so heatedly that night.
    Or if I’d listened to my parents and stayed home to scoop ice cream in Montana, things might have turned out differently. Maybe I would have met another boy and forgotten about Ethan in time, and he would still be alive today.
    But we can’t change the past. Imagining what might have been is a pointless exercise. That much, I knew. Rationally, at least.
    Emotionally, it was another issue altogether, for as I sat on the rocks with the salty sea breeze whisking past my cheeks and blowing my hair back, I knew that no amount of self-discipline or rational thinking could keep me from dreaming about all the things that might have been. The life we could have had if he hadn’t died that night.
    * * *
    Right . Clearly, I was no better than a drug addict or an alcoholic—for I was hooked on something that was very bad for me. My substance of choice was heartbreak.
    That night, it was impossible to resist. I turned on my laptop again and did more research on lucid dreaming and astral projection, then I slipped into bed and stared at the palms of my hands for at least twenty minutes, hoping to enter a dream state where I could go back in time, again, to that last summer—but this time, I would control what happened. At least in my dream. I wanted to be with Ethan again, to erase what occurred the night he died.
    I wanted to taste Ethan’s lips on mine. I wanted everything to feel real and wonderful—just like it had that first morning when I woke up in this house and ventured downstairs to find Gram and Grampy cooking breakfast for me in the kitchen.
    But on some level I knew this wasn’t the route to healing. That I was prolonging the torture.
    I promised myself this would be the last time. Tomorrow I would start fresh and focus on something else. I would take on some sort of project—maybe clean out Gram’s gutters or paint her veranda.
    Committing to that promise, I lay down on my side with my head on the pillow, and summoned up memories of Ethan’s kiss…the sound of his voice…the clean scent of his hair…
    Eventually, my eyes grew heavy. I fought to keep them open, but in my struggle, it felt as if I floated up off the bed, out of the room, down the stairs. I could see all I passed as I whooshed through the front door. Out I went.
    I flew to the coast, over the dark water, then I swung back around to the wide green lawn in front of Ethan’s summer mansion and landed gently on the grass beside the sundial.
    Although I was in some sort of spirit form in my dream, I reached out, lay my hands on the dial plate, and felt a shock sizzle through me as I gripped it