My Last Text Was "I Want You"

Do you have a hole in your damn head? Are you blind? Can't you see I'm obsessed with you, you moron?

The plane was going down.

While everyone else sobbed into their phones, leaving tearful voicemails for their families, I was doing something else entirely.

I opened a chat with my arch-nemesis.

I unleashed a barrage of passionate verbal abuse mixed with a deathbed confession.

"Last time I pretended to be wasted so you'd sleep with me, and you did nothing! Now I'm a goner, and it's too late for regrets!"

Sent.

I squeezed my eyes shut. Waited for the end.

But the end didn't come.

I opened my eyes.

I wasn't dead.

Not only was I alive, but I was also gripping his hand for dear life, sitting in a high school classroom from eight years ago.

Kingston arched a brow, staring me down. "Emmett, you're gripping me pretty tight. You planning a confession or something?"

Help.

Restarting life is great and all, but did the opening scene have to be complete social suicide?

Chapter 1

Gravity vanished.

My stomach slammed into my throat.

Oxygen stripped from my lungs. Consciousness frayed at the edges. Strength bled out of my limbs like water from a cracked jar.

Violent turbulence.

My phone slipped from my grasp.

Instinct took over. I reached out blindly. Desperate to anchor myself to anything.

My fingers closed around something.

Soft. Warm. Living.

Strange. Since when do airplane seats feel like human skin?

The cabin was a tomb of silence, yet a voice sliced through the dark.

"Hey. How long you gonna hold on?"

Who is talking?

We're crashing. We're all in shock. We're dying.

"You deaf? Or just enjoying the grip?"

There it was again.

Closer this time. Crisper.

Maddeningly familiar.

My brain, sluggish and oxygen-starved, finally processed the data.

That voice.

Moments ago, I was rage-texting him my final words. Now, my bravado evaporated.

In the face of death, I had to admit it. The nonchalance was a lie.

I wasn't ready to go. I was bitter. So bitter I was hallucinating his voice.

But why did he sound different?

Younger.

Laced with a nostalgic, arrogant boyishness I hadn't heard in years.

I drifted in the void, trying to pin down the thought, when a sharp tug on my arm shattered the illusion.

Like a drowning man yanked from the depths.

I gasped. My eyes snapped open.

The world flooded in.

The person in front of me came into focus.

Raised eyebrow. A lazy, reckless grin. A face so handsome it felt like a physical assault.

Kingston.

Sensation crashed back into my body. Overwhelming. Immediate.

The deafening buzz of summer cicadas outside. The scent of sun-baked floor polish and old wood. Sweat trickling down my temple.

And the undeniable fact that I was currently crushing Kingstons hand in a vice grip.

Hallucination?

"Emmett, seriously. Don't tell me you're actually confessing?"

Not a hallucination.

I snatched my hand back like Id touched a hot stove. I stared at my own palm.

Beneath the skin, the color was a healthy, vibrant flush.

I made a fist. Released it. Fist. Release.

Complete motor control. The pulse hammered against my wrist. Strong. Alive.

"Cat got your tongue? Tsk. All that studying finally fried your brain, you nerd."

I looked up.

My eyes locked on the navy blue of his uniform.

It was the summer of 2016.

I was a sophomore. Kingston was a senior.

Chapter 2

Mortal enemies. That was us.

I loathed his slouch, his permanent smirk, that air of effortless, unearned cool.

He despised me right back. To him, I was a stick in the mud. A killjoy. A robot programmed to study.

Cruel irony, then, that his little brother, Quinn, was my best friend.

I spent my afternoons at their place, burying my nose in textbooks. Just like today.

"Disgusting." Kingston lounged against the window frame, a sneer twisting his lips.

I followed his gaze down to the garden.

Quinn was there. Someone was confessing to him.

Another boy.

Of the three brothers, Quinn was the pretty one. The one with the soft edges. He attracted attention.

"Damn queers. Pulling that shit right in my front yard. Makes me sick."

Kingston turned his head. His eyes locked onto mine. A challenge. "Right?"

Maybe I was imagining it, but beneath the mockery, his gaze was intense. Heavy.

Waiting for an answer.

The seventeen-year-old Emmett would have nodded. Even if I hated Kingston, I would have agreed just to fit the mold.

But the soul occupying this body was twenty-five.

Eight years. Wed been through hell and back.

Id gone from hating him to loving him. Loving him enough that he was the last image burned onto my retinas before the plane went down.

I couldn't lie. Not now.

I shook my head. "I don't get why it matters."

Kingston froze. His expression darkened, shadows falling over his eyes.

"Tch. Nerds are such a buzzkill."

He shoved off the wall and stormed out. His back radiated pure irritation.

I stood there, staring at the empty doorway. Lost.

Time travel? Rebirth?

Doesn't matter. Either way, the twenty-five-year-old Emmett is dead.

How will Kingston react when he hears the news?

Will it gut him? Will he feel a shred of guilt?

After all, I was on that flight for him. I was flying to his engagement party.

Eighteen-year-old Kingston wasn't walking down the aisle yet.

He was screaming at me on a tennis court.

"Mr. Valedictorian and you can't hit a damn ball?"

He slammed his racket against his thigh. "I practically fed it to your strings! Are your eyes painted on?"

His voice boomed, vibrating against my eardrums.

But it wasn't just the noise. The sensation of the crashthe zero-gravity drop, the pressurestill clung to my vestibular system.

The world tilted. Vertigo washed over me.

I dropped my racket. It clattered against the clay. "I'm done."

Quinn jogged over, playing peacekeeper. "Don't listen to him. You know he has no filter. He doesn't mean it."

I knew. Kingston was an equal-opportunity offender. He barked at everyone.

He just barked at me a little louder.

I sank onto the bench, staring at nothing.

Thud.

A cold water bottle hit my thigh.

My reflexes were shot. I fumbled. The bottle rolled onto the dirt.

"Tsk." Kingston bent down. Snapped the bottle up. "Drink. You're white as a sheet. I don't need you dying on my watch."

I didn't move.

He cursed under his breath, cracked the seal with a sharp twist, and jammed the cold plastic into my hand. "What, your highness? Waiting for me to feed you?"

I didn't have the energy to fight. I lifted the bottle. Took a sip.

Grapefruit.

Sweetness bloomed on my tongue.

Chapter 3

His expression softened. A look that said, Thats better.

He tossed my racket aside and sprawled onto the bench next to me, eyes tracking the volley on the court with lazy indifference.

"Up until dawn again? Burying yourself in those damn textbooks?"

Our houses were next-door neighbors. My bedroom window faced his, separated only by a narrow strip of garden. Close enough that if he changed his shirt near the glass, I got a front-row seat.

"Couldn't skip one assignment and get some sleep? Or will your precious GPA collapse without that extra hour?"

His tongue was a razor.

I wasn't the type to roll over. Usually, I gave as good as I got.

Do you want me to fail?

That was the retort loaded in the chamber.

But the words stuck in my throat.

When I opened my mouth, something else came out. "Are you worried about me?"

Kingston flinched. His pupils constricted. He bolted upright like hed been electrocuted. "Bullshit!"

He spat the word out and stormed back onto the court.

But his head was gone. He moved like a glitching simulation. He missed every single serve Quinn sent his way.

I slowly screwed the cap back onto the water bottle. My heart hammered against my ribs. A frantic, pounding rhythm.

Is this it? Is the universe giving me a do-over? A chance to fix the regrets?

Or maybe it's just showing me what I missed.

Back then, I only heard the mockery. I only felt the target on my back.

I never stopped to think that maybe, just maybe, he was posturing. Hiding behind a wall of defensive arrogance.

I pressed a hand to my chest. Forced a breath into my lungs to quell the surge of wild, impossible hope.

Kingston jogged back. His voice was tight. Strained. "Fuck. You okay? You look like you're gonna pass out."

"I'm fine." I shook my head.

The sun was blinding.

If I get to do this again if I get another shot with Kingston

I fell asleep clinging to the fantasy of a second life.

I woke up staring at a popcorn ceiling.

A college dorm room.

I blinked. Maybe I was seeing things.

Closed my eyes. Opened them again.

Still the dorm.

I lay paralyzed.

A thought, cold and wet like moss, crept up my spine.

My brain buzzed. My blood turned to ice water.

It wasn't a rebirth. It wasn't time travel.

It was the reel.

The life review.

The final, frantic firing of neurons before the lights go out forever.

Fate hadn't saved me. There was no miracle.

I was still on that plane. I was still careening toward a certain death. Nothing had changed.

Knock, knock.

Quinn rapped his knuckles against my bed frame. "Heading to my place after class?"

My fingers felt stiff as I tapped the screen of my phone. The calendar notification glared back at me: Quinn's Birthday.

I remembered this day. Every second of it.

Halfway through the party, the grid failed. The blackout lasted for hours. The repair crew never showed.

In the memory, I walked back to my house in the pitch black. Kingston followed me. Walking me home.

"You heard them, right?"

The dialogue was identical to the script in my head.

"They were sneaking around. Making out."

I pulled the door open. Knelt in the dark foyer to fumble with my laces. "It's normal. They're dating."

Chapter 4

Quinn had been off the market since freshman year. His boyfriend was his roommate, Brandon.

Solid. Serious.

I was used to it. The way they drowned out the rest of the world, lost in their own orbit of PDA.

Kingston didnt leave.

He leaned against the doorframe, his expression swallowed by the shadows. "Emmett. Tell me I'm wrong. Youve still never been kissed, have you?"

The script was identical to my memory.

This was the part where I was supposed to get defensive and snap, "So what? None of your business."

Then, he would drop the act. Hed offer his "charity."

"Pathetic. Beg me, and maybe Ill lower myself to help you."

His version of help involved pinning me against the drywall. Devouring me until the power grid surged back to life and the lights flickered on.

Later, hed blame the atmosphere.

It was too dark. Senses got crossed. Hearing Quinn and Brandon go at it messed with my head. Dont read into it.

Back then, my heart had hammered a frantic rhythm against my ribs only to shatter at his excuse. To save face, Id laughed it off.

Yeah, totally. Kissing another dude is whatever. Like kissing a slab of meat.

"Well?" Kingstons voice cut through the dark, amused by my silence. "Too embarrassed to admit it?"

"No," I lied. "It's gone."

Kingston froze. I felt the shock radiate off him.

"With who? You're dating someone?"

Before I could answer, he steamrolled over the question.

"Impossible. Quinn says you're perpetually single. Ohwait. You mean Daisy? The girl with the pigtails from kindergarten?"

He let out a sharp, derisive scoff.

"Emmett, that doesn't count. A real kiss it has to be with someone you actually want"

His voice cut out.

He was right about one thing. Total darkness acts like an amplifier.

Sight is useless, so sound takes over.

I heard it.

The jagged hitch in his breath. The way his rhythm broke.

"Hm?" I feigned ignorance, curious to see how far hed push. "Is that the rule? Then I guess you're right. Technically, Im still available. Problem?"

Silence.

Thick. Heavy. Suffocating.

It stretched until the air between us felt charged with static.

"Do you" He stumbled, his usual arrogance failing him. "Do you need me to"

"Need you to what?"

He went quiet again. A sharp inhale hiss through his teeth.

"Hearing them in the other room doesn't it give you an urge? Don't you want to try it?"

I stared into the black void where his eyes should be. "No."

Liar.

I wanted it so bad my teeth ached.

But I knew the rules of this game. No matter what choice I made in this replay, the ending was written in stone. I was dying.

I just needed to know one thing.

Was I the only one pining all those years? Or did he feel the magnetic pull too?

Kingston had run out of excuses.

Stalemate.

Chapter 5

I caved. "Fine. Maybe I do want to. But like you said, it only counts if it's with someone you actually like."

Am I that person?

"Just pretend." Kingston stepped into my personal space. His body heat was a physical weight, pressing down on me. "Imagine I'm someone else. Like Madison. You're into her, right? I heard you took her out a few times and still haven't sealed the deal?"

Madison?

It took me a second to even process the name.

We were debate partners once. That was it. I hadn't thought about her in a decade.

"Did I guess right?"

Kingstons hand shot up. He gripped my jaw.

His fingers were strong. Too strong. The pressure on my chin bordered on possessive.

"No, I"

Click.

The breaker flipped.

Light flooded the hallway, stinging my retinas. I blinked, instinctively recoiling from the sudden brightness.

"Lights are on," I whispered.

Kingston didnt move. His gaze was dark, heavy, anchoring me in place.

He raised his free hand and covered my eyes. "No. They're not."

His mouth crashed onto mine.

It wasnt tentative. It was a collision