CHAPTER EIGHT
MATTI
I wondered for the longest time if she’d been lost in thought thinking about me when she mumbled those words.
Then, as the years went by and I overheard more of the chaos her brain was capable of churning up, I gave in to the fact that it likely never had anything to do with me.
It was far more plausible, she’d been staring at the sky, thinking about us up in a tree, how far we’d moved from the ground, the depths we could have fallen, and the height to which her bracelet flew when her mind went off on a tangent.
“I wish you had said that,” she whispers. “I would have loved hearing it.”
“Wherever you were inside your mind, you seemed out of earshot,” I gently tease her.
“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 a divorced 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 think she wants 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.
“A shooting star.” Nessa sounds breathless at the sight. Her mouth spreads into a smile so wide, she’s beaming. “Now there’s something we didn’t have last time around.”
I watch the sky a moment longer, holding on to the magic of this moment before it passes us by like so many others. “We didn’t need one then.” I lower my gaze to find her staring back, a new question forming in her eyes. “We already had everything we could have wished for.”
Her eyes gloss over with emotion. “What are you wishing for now?”
“Can’t tell you,” I muster a smile. “Then it won’t come true.”
“Maybe I’m wishing for the same thing.” She studies me a moment, her gaze sweeping back and forth between my eyes and my mouth. She wants to be kissed. Not nearly as bad as I want to kiss her, but still, she’d let me if I tried. She’d let me and kiss me back for the moment, but then what?
How long before the past blends with the present again and we’re standing on the brink of a future now in turmoil because we made impulsive choices while stuck in time?
“Maybe you are.” As gently as I can, I start to untangle myself from her. “But even if we’ve made the same wish, it’s not coming true tonight.”
A shadow of hurt darkens her eyes before she understands what I’m saying. “I’m back to being a divorced woman on my first couple’s vacation with a man who isn’t my husband, aren’t I?”
I could tell her that I know she’s not really here with Oliver. But then she’s made no effort to tell me herself. So, I bite the bottom corner of my lip, holding it until it hurts. “Time travel is tricky business, isn’t it.”
“I suppose so.” She slips further away from me, and I swear I can feel the pieces of me that inevitably find a home with her, ripping away from me all over again. “Maybe it’s time we put out the fire.”
I know she means the one still flickering away in the pit, but that’s not how it feels. It feels like she’s saying it’s time to put us out. To drown the spark between us once and for all.
I start to move toward the pit, preparing to smother the flames with dirt when she grabs my arm and stops me. “Can I ask you something? Can I ask you and you just answer, even if it sounds like the dumbest, most random question ever?”
“You can ask me anything.”
Her eyes lock on mine and I swear I can see it, a wondering she’s held inside her, buried there, for God knows how long, slowly surfacing. “You always called me before soundcheck, and then one day, you just stopped. Why?”
“I didn’t stop.” I never wanted to. “ You stopped taking my calls when you took that summer job. And I didn’t want to bug you with my old shit when you were so caught up in your new thing, so I let it go for a while.
And then...” I don’t finish my sentence.
I don’t need to. We both know what happened next.
“No,” she shakes her head. “You stopped before. I remember. The day I took that job, you forgot to call me. I know because I called you when I didn’t hear from you and by then, soundcheck was over.”
I think back. It’s not hard. That day will forever be etched into my memory in great detail. It was the beginning of the end. “I didn’t forget to call you. I missed my chance to call, yeah, but I tried to. I intended to.”
She frowns, gnawing on the inside corner of her lower lip. “What happened?” She’s asking, but she sounds scared of the answer. Like maybe she’s not so sure she wants to know.
Honestly, I’m not so sure I want to tell her.
But, I told her I would. So I do.
“I had this trip planned. I was going to surprise you.” I try to laugh it off, make light of what still weighs heavy on my heart two years later.
“Romantic treehouse. Hot tub under the stars. Amazing meals. A fireplace and floor-to-ceiling windows to take in the surrounding nature.” I shake my head, chuckling.
“You should have seen the pictures. It was the whole fairy tale deal.” I shrug.
“Anyway, at the last minute, Gary tried to book the band for some appearance, and he wanted me to cancel the trip. I was on the phone with him, telling him what he could do with his desires...when I should have been calling you.”
Her hand moves to cover her mouth, trying to hide her expression, but I can see all I need to in her eyes. Regret. The thing I didn’t want her to feel. The reason I never told her before. “I had no idea.”
“You weren’t supposed to.”
“I never would have taken that job.”
I nod. “I know.” I take a step toward her. “But you needed to. You taking that job, it changed your whole life, Ness. I’d never have wanted you to miss that for a few days of fun in a treehouse.”
She just stares at me, speechless.
Then it happens.
One drop.
Then two.
The sky opens up and a wall of water comes crashing down on us, leaving us soaked to the bone.
Just like we were the last time.
NESSA
I’m still dripping water when I get back to our cabin, sneaking in as quietly as I can.
My efforts are for naught, it turns out.
“Where’ve you been at this hour?” Vale’s face appears, lit up in the glow of his cell phone. He’s spread out on the sofa just inside the door, aimlessly scrolling from the looks of things.
“Out.”