Page 35 of Chasing After You
“Are there other things you haven’t said to me?” Her eyes get bigger as she asks. “Things maybe you thought I wouldn’t have heard?” There’s hope in her voice. Like she wants the answer to be yes.
It is.
But this isn’t where I want to tell her. “Wouldn’t be much point in saying them now.” Not when they’d be wrapped up in our past. And the thing I came here for is our future.
No, it has to be different. Significant in a way that she won’t find ways to doubt it. Big enough to convey everything I felt when I hopped on a redeye and flew to Hawaii to crash her vacation.
“I suppose there wouldn’t be much point to it,” she agrees, though I notice she turns her gaze, casting it down at the ground. “We should probably climb back down. We did leave a fire unattended.”
“Oh, shit.” For a minute there, I almost forgot about that.
Getting down a tree is slightly more challenging than going up. Much like cats, we’re stuck having to back our way down, making it a tad more precarious, not being able to see where we’re going.
Obviously, we’re going down to the ground. Still, it’s always a little unnerving doing it blindly.
My feet hit the dirt first and I step back, giving Nessa room to land easily.
In the dark, she miscalculates, one foot landing on the overgrown roots and throwing her off balance. She nearly falls face first when I catch her by the waist and pull her back.
“Thanks.” She sounds breathless. Maybe from the near fall, maybe the climb down.
Maybe from being caught.
“Anytime.” With her feet steady under her body again, I ease my grip on her waist. She doesn’t move to put distance between us though. Instead, she starts to turn. One small step at a time, she turns, until after what feels like an agonizing eternity, we’re face to face. Mere inches between us.
“If this were our first date, I’d be complaining about the mosquitos right about now,” she says, a tender lightness to her voice.
“Actually, I believe you claimed it was a spider that got you. That it must have bit you while we were climbing around in the tree,” I correct her.
She laughs. It’s airy and bright and I love how it lights her up. How it lights me up. “A spider bite. I was so ridiculous.”
“I don’t know,” I tease. “You seemed to think it was totally believable at the time.”
“Funny thing, time,” she whispers, laugh fading as her gaze rests on my mouth while she talks. “A few hours ago, I was adivorced woman on my first couple’s vacation with a man who isn’t my husband, and now...”
Her words trail off, but I have an idea where her thoughts were headed.
“Now you’re a teenager on a first date,” I finish quietly.
“It ought to be impossible to move toward the future only to arrive in the past.”
“Some people think it’s impossible to find the love of your life when you’re fourteen.” I swallow down the deep yearning to kiss her building inside me with every exchange we share while still standing so close, her eyes never wavering from my mouth while I do my best to look at anything but hers.
“Some people might think we’re the proof they’re right,” she barely breathes the words, like they’re painful to say out loud.
They ought to be.
They’re painful to hear.
“They would be wrong.”
Finally, she lifts her gaze again to look me in the eyes. “Matti.”
Over the years, I’ve heard her say a million things just uttering my name. None ever as conflicted as now.
I don’t answer. What I want to say, what I thinkshewants me to say, I’m not sure she’s ready to hear. More than that, I don’t think she’d believe me. So, I stay quiet and hold her gaze, hoping she lets me in another way. That she’ll listen for everything I’m not putting into words.
How long we stand here like this, I don’t know. The world seems to fall away from us. Only when an owl hoots somewhere in the branches above us, does the trance break and we both tilt our heads back at once, glancing up, just in time to see it.
