After Forever Read Online Free PDF Page A

only one arm, I simply couldn’t. I slid forward, slid forward, shifted my weight, reaching for the armrest of the chair. I tipped myself forward, felt my leg catch my weight. I had it, I had it…then my knee wobbled, and I had to either sit back on the bed or topple forward and damage myself worse.
    I sat back on the bed, and with my one good arm extended forward to reach for the chair, my balance shifted completely backward, forcing me to lie down across the bed.  
    I laughed, because it was either that or curse. “I guess maybe I do need help,” I said, struggling back up to a sitting position.
    Eden didn’t say anything. She just wrapped her arm around my waist, helped me slide forward, stood up with me. My arm was around her shoulders, holding on, too tight. I hobbled on one foot, and we swiveled together so I was lined up with the wheelchair, facing away.  
    She smelled like citrus shampoo, fabric softener, and some kind of flowery lotion. Not like Ever. Ever always smelled like Bath and Bodyworks Warm Vanilla Sugar body lotion. I’d always smelled it on her, but it wasn’t until we moved in together that I discovered the source of the smell, the joy of watching her sit naked on the edge of the bed, the bottle of lotion on the bed beside her, slathering it on her skin, rubbing it in, massaging her legs, her hips, her stomach and sides and arms, her boobs and her shoulders, and then she’d have me rub it onto her back, and usually that led to other things, even if those other things had been the reason for her having taken a shower in the first place.  
    Eden smelled more like…cherries. Flowery, delicate and feminine. I felt her pressed up against me, and I was never so aware of anything in all my life, never so uncomfortable with how I felt, how her body was soft against mine, familiar yet foreign all at once.
    I gripped the armrest of the wheelchair, gritting my teeth as my leg protested the weight of my body. I lowered myself slowly, hanging on to Eden in lieu of using my right arm. She lowered me, kneeling with me, holding on to me. She was strong, very, very strong. I could feel the power in her body as she’d held up my weight.  
    So much ran through my mind in those brief seconds of physical contact. She was soft, curvy, and yet beneath the curves was a solid core of strength that Ever lacked. Ever didn’t go to the gym very often, didn’t seem to care. She’d go with Eden once in a while, but for the most part Ever never seemed to obsess much about exercising or dieting. She didn’t indulge in unhealthy food all that often, but she didn’t go on strict diets, either.  
    In Eden, I felt cords of muscle, and I remembered how many of Ever’s letters had been about her sister’s ongoing struggle with her shape, her weight, her sometimes fanatic dedication to working out, to diets and fitness. Lately, according to Ever, Eden had settled down a bit with the whole weight obsession, but I could still feel the difference in their bodies.  
    I hated myself for even noticing a difference.  
    I was in the chair then, sitting down a little too hard in an effort to get away from Eden. From my own awareness of her.  
    I was lonely, scared, and hurting. That was all. I missed my wife, and Eden was her twin sister. It was inevitable that I’d draw comparisons, that, if I was attracted to Ever, I’d be attracted to Eden as well. But I wasn’t, was I? I wasn’t attracted to her, not really. It was just seeing . She was beautiful, just like Ever. And that’s all it was, noticing the similarities.  
    I shifted in the chair, breathing hard, grinding my teeth through the pain of my throbbing leg, having jarred it as I sat down. The pain was okay, though, because it was a distraction. Then she was behind me, out of sight, pushing the chair with my cast-framed leg extended out in front of me. Neither of us spoke until we got to the elevator.  
    “Shit,” Eden said. “I forgot Apollo.” She turned us