Page 93 of Fly Back to Me
It’s looped around a thin, silver chain, and I hold it up between my fingers. I turn the metal wings between them, each rotation connecting another piece of the puzzle. Until the engraving on the inside of the stainless-steel band rears its head.
And the last section of the jigsaw finally falls into place.
Fly Back to Me
I barely swallow as a light begins to shine on the truth.
Revealing it ray by ray.
The white feather. The anklet. My metal ring with the same message she wrote the first day I met her.
My blood runs cold, shock pooling into my system and chaining me in place.
That wasn’t the first day I met her.
My eyes latch shut, pinching painfully before glancing in the direction Olivia went. The crystal beads of water dive downward, the momentum fueling my rapid heartbeat as a fresh reality is unveiled.
The parking lot. The cry for help. The dumpster.
Buried images whirl like a cyclone in my mind, my pulse spinning with the ferocity when I recall her blonde hair. Her long legs.
Her grip.
A cap gun fires off, my legs darting across the sodden grass to round the side of the house.
Until my boots abruptly halt.
And theresheis.
Her back leans against my house, palms flat on the siding behind her hips. Those champagne locks dampen around her face, her tight blouse and baggy jeans soaking with the weight of the plunging droplets.
My eyes find hers, that familiar bright green spearing through the rain. Like my quick return pumped the color back into them.
The same way this woman has trickled color into my dark world.
Ever since I read her letter.
Ever since then.
Holy shit.
All of our layers are stripped as the water droplets rhythmically patter between us. Every inch of us exposed to each other, down to the very souls we’re wearing on our sleeves. And even though the lines of rain create a barrier before her, my vision is clearer now than if today was the brightest and sunniest day.
Olivia’s uncloaked to me.
Standing there with her invisible wings.
My guardian angel.
She’s the one.
I hold up the ring, my chest caving as my lungs falter, and I shout over the whisper of the rain. “You wrote this that day I met you! You wrote this!” My tattered breaths tumble from me, hand trembling as the revelation wracks my body.
Olivia shakes her head as she yells over the shower. “I had no idea it was you!” Her feminine curves protrude through her soaked clothes, those curtain bangs pasted to her temples as she remains glued to the siding. “I had no idea you came back to me that day. It wasn’t until I saw the feather that night I left thebrewery,” she pleads.
My bottom lip quakes, recounting that Sunday when she visited me to make amends.
That’s why.
