Page 51 of The Strawberry Field
The view is breathtaking.
The lake sprawls out below us, its waters silver and endless. Docks look like toothpicks. Houses like dollhouses. In the distance, a field glows green, horses grazing like flecks of shadow. For the first time in a long time, the beauty doesn’t feel like something happening far away from me. I actually feel present inside it.
Jake offers his hand as I scramble over a final outcrop. I take it, and for a moment, I’m pressed against his chest.
Something shifts.
I don’t know what.
But it feels important.
He brushes the back of his hand across my cheek, then slips his arm around my shoulders and turns me toward the lake.
“It’s like looking down from heaven,” I whisper.
“Yeah,” he says.“It is.”
We stand there, quiet, taking it in. Then he looks at me, steady, unguarded. I feel the pull between us, the quiet knowing that he sees me and accepts me completely. Even the cracks in my foundation. The failures. The uncertainties. And I’m grateful, so deeply grateful, to be seen as I am.
“Is it okay if I kiss you, Sawyer?”
I place my hand on his chest, feeling the warm strength of him. I nod once, hear myself whisper, “It’s more than okay.”
He takes his time with it, studying my face with an intensity that stirs emotion deep inside me and makes it impossible to look anywhere else. And suddenly, I realize I have been waiting for this my entire adult life. Wanting to be wanted by this man who snagged my heart as a boy a long, long time ago.
He leans in, cupping my jaw as though I might vanish if he isn’t careful. He settles his mouth against mine, a whisper of a kiss, but it’s enough to unravel me. Heat sparks through, so swift and consuming my knees nearly give way.
I sink into him, my fingers anchoring in his shirt. The kiss deepens, still tender but no longer careful, like a promise breaking open after years of being locked up. The air around us disappears, the only sound a flock of geese flying over the lake below us.
There’s no mistaking it now. This isn’t a moment borrowed from the past. It’s something new, something that carries both memory and possibility, as if all the years between then and now have been leading us here.
And I know this: being kissed by Jake is everything I imagined and more.
When he pulls back, he brushes the back of his hand across my cheek.
I look up at him, not even trying to hide what I’m feeling. I don’t think I could if I wanted to. “Do you believe people are meant to meet again, Jake?”
“I do now,” he says, his voice low and intimate.
“I never thought I’d see you again. And yet… I think it wasn’t meant to happen until now,” I say, hoping he hears the truth in my voice.
He reaches out, touches my face.“Yeah,” he says.“I believe that. And I also believe we weren’t finished. What we had back then… it never left. Not for me.”
“Not for me either,” I say, the admission out before I can think better of it.“When I got here, I didn’t want to keep going. I couldn’t see anything good ahead. But maybe there’s still something left. Maybe I’m meant to find out what it is.”
Jake looks at me, eyes full of quiet emotion. “I don’t know what comes next. But I’m grateful. And if you choose to stay…”
He lets the words hang, layered with meaning.
A part of me wants to retreat, afraid of wanting anything at all. But another part, small but steady, stays open. Just open. And for now, that feels like enough.
I reach out and cover his hand with mine. Squeeze once.
Words aren’t necessary.
Possibility is enough for now. And for me, a reason to go on.
Chapter Twenty
