Satellite: The Satellite Trilogy, Part I by Lee Davidson Read Free Book Online Page B

as long as I…I…
    There’s no bargaining left. I’m already dead.
    Tate pulls away and bites her bottom lip. Her finger stops moving at my ribs, and her face contorts with a sadness I’ve never seen before, not even when I was sick. Afraid of waking, I don’t dare move, despite the pain from the invisible blade hacking my heart into pieces.
    She crushes another kiss on me before her beautiful, soft mouth trails up my jaw. Goose bumps spread across my neck and arms from the heat of her breath.
    “Please come back,” she whispers when she reaches my ear, sending the chills into overdrive.
    I open my mouth to tell her I’m here, but there’s no sound. As if in a nightmare, I try vocalizing again and again, only to be met with infuriating silence.
    “Grant, please. I need you,” she begs, louder than before and sounding frightened.
    My eyes fly open, and I’m back in a place that’s more like Hell than Heaven.

.
    4. You’re a stalker, is what you are!
    When I finally stop panting, I take a minute to study my sweaty reflection in the mirror. I look exactly as I had in life—as of a year ago, anyway. Even the scar cutting through my eyebrow, a souvenir from a victorious football season, is unchanged. Still, I hardly recognize the person staring back at me. The best part of me is gone. I’m incomplete without Tate.
    I ignore the pain in my muscles and dry my face on my sleeve. Everything about Tate was so real: her feel, her smell, her taste. Could my imagination have gone that far? Maybe Willow’s right. Maybe forgetting is better—or, at the very least, necessary. At that traitorous thought, I shoot my reflection a narrow look and push myself up off the floor.
    After trading my sweat-soaked clothes in the closet for some fresh duds, I hit up the kitchen for relief, concede that no amount of cold water splashed on my face will help, and turn to caffeine instead. As luck would have it, the fridge has been stocked with Coke. Go figure. Willow’s going to love that.
    Too exhausted to code again, I chug down the soda and opt for a change of scenery. My feet drag me to one of the empty pews in Alogan. A twinge of jealously tugs at me as the careless birds dart back and forth overhead. What I wouldn’t give to soar happily with them, to be free from this emptiness in my chest. Tate’s words, “I need you,” play over in my head until the anxiety becomes unbearable. I’m helpless at a time when she needs my protection the most.
    To stop thinking of Tate, I think of Tate’s brother. Elliott was the only one who had truly accepted the reality that my life was going to end, though I doubt my death was any easier on him. We had viewed each other as brothers already, even though I hadn’t married his older sister yet. Elliott had given me the greatest gift I could ask for under the circumstances: a promise that he would push Tate to move on after my death.
    Part of me hoped that Elliott and Fischer (Tate’s youngest brother) could keep Tate occupied enough to eventually forget me. A larger part of me feared that she would. Today, I was siding with the larger part.
    Something I haven’t thought about in years surfaces. The memory is sharp—maybe even sharper than it was before I died. I try not to get too excited, knowing my memories could still evaporate any minute.
    Less than a month shy of graduation, I was working for the warden (a.k.a. my father), as I did every Saturday. If it had been up to my dear old dad, I would have dropped out of high school my senior year, just as he had done. “Eleventh grade is more than sufficient for a carpenter,” he’d argued to my mother. That spring was the company’s busiest and best yet, and with every other construction company in the area equally swamped, full-time bodies were hard to come by. He needed mine.
    He was right, though it killed me to admit it. Without question, I would take over my father’s company someday, and what I was learning in class wasn’t