34. Chapter 33
Chapter 33
James
I should not be doing this.
I should be trying to stay as far away from her as possible.
Just to get it out of our system.
God, why did hearing her say that hurt so much?
That should have gotten it out of my system, but now she seems to be in my system more than ever before. She’s in every vein and nerve, and when I close my eyes, she’s there too.
To put it lightly, seeing her in this new light isn’t something I’m ever going to forget, and I think I’ll dream about her every night for the rest of my life. My memories of her are something I’ll hold on to long after she’s gone from Gull’s Bay. That’s it she’s etched into every corner of my brain and soul, and I’ll never be able to buff it out.
That’s putting it lightly.
I can’t not think of her, I see her in everything. I’m consumed by her. To say I like her would be like saying the sky likes the sun.
I should not be picking her up and taking her out like we’re dating.
Her telling me I could stay last night almost sent me into a tailspin, I was so ready for her to kick me out the minute it was over. Then I pulled her into my body and it’s like she melted into me; any last bits of mistrust or hate or even dislike was gone like it was never there in the first place. I can’t believe I’m the only one feeling this, because she looks at me the way I do her, like I’m safe with her .
In the morning, she looked so at peace and calm, I don’t think I’ve seen it on her before. She’s always so wound up, always walking this thin line no one else can see, always trying so hard to keep that smile on her face. But the one she had this morning, that one was real, that one was calm and really happy. I felt like the grinch when his heart finally grew ten sizes bigger, felt my own smile grow just by looking at her. Felt those dark parts of my heart start to fill with something—with sunshine. It was the first time I felt like maybe I had been wrong this whole time, maybe I was wrong about never letting anyone in.
And I never expected that, the thought that Kat of all people would be able to change how I see things.
I never expected to spend so much time with her, never expected to sleep with her, but the most surprising thing was I never expected her to be such a cuddler. I didn’t want to get out of bed with her.
I could have very happily stayed in bed with her for the whole day and repeated the night before, but I didn’t want to have Ella walk in and find me there. I don’t think her walking in would be the greatest start to whatever is happening between us.
Trying to pry myself out of Katherine’s iron grip was a mean feat. Somehow in the night we had to become even more entangled with each other, her legs wrapped around mine. Like some little koala. Leaving her was physically painful. I have truly fallen so deep down the rabbit hole when it comes to her.
I don’t think she’s going to give up on her soulmate search, even if I want her to, but I understand her more now and I can’t be mad at her anymore. But the idea of her packing up and leaving still burns me from the inside.
I don’t know if I’m ready for a real relationship with her, I’ve never had the chance to prove to myself I can, and she deserves nothing but the best. I want to be that person. I don’t think anyone else will be good enough for her. But I’m not even sure I am .
But my mind is clear for once, and if I have any hope of getting her to forget about her goal of finding her soulmate, I’ve got to show her it’s worth trying with someone else.
My hands are sweating when the door swings open. She's in a white flowy dress that I’ve seen her wear before, but it’s like I’m seeing it for the first time now. She gestures for me to come in as she holds her phone to her ear.
“I know, Mom, I’m excited too, but can’t get my hopes up. You know, expect the worst,” I hear her say as she leads me into her room, where she proceeds to fish around for a pair of shoes.
An uncomfortable stabbing pain stirs in my chest at that, that she expects the worst from things so she’s not disappointed. I know the feeling all too well and I hate that she feels that too. I want her to always expect the best. To always shoot for the best case scenario because that’s what she deserves.
I lean on the door frame as I watch. “Okay, Mom, I’ll speak to you later, I love you lots.”
I expect her to hang up, but she seems to wait for a minute.
“Bella, if you scream down the phone one more time, I’m hanging up.” It’s kinda odd in a way to think of her having another life, other people, another place. It seems like she’s been here for so long this is her place but it’s not and that thought seems to send a kinda new pain into my chest. “Yes, he’s here.” She tries to whisper but I’m in her room now and too close to not hear it, a smile pulls on my face knowing she’s told her other life about me, although I hate to think what she said about me before a few days ago. I try to squash it before she sees it, but I’m too late.
It gives me another moment to cast my eyes over her surroundings, my quick assessment is that she’s not a minimalist. Souvenirs scattered over her dresser, books piled up on her desk spilling onto the floor in more piles, clothes are hung up over the wardrobe door but not inside and more on the floor and it’s just so contrasting to the way she is outwardly. But now that I know her, it actually seems very her.
She turns towards me as she lifts up my sweatshirt, handing it back to me as she grabs her bag. “Yes, I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” She makes a face at me like something between a smile and a ‘I’m sorry.’ “I will if you let me go.” She points out her room, shuffling me out, turning her light off and walking ahead of me towards the door. “Okay, I love and miss you.”
She finally hangs up and lets out a little sigh turning to me before we get to the front door.
“I’m sorry about that, the time difference is hard sometimes, sometimes it’s like a whole village thing when my friends are at my mom’s, do I need a jacket?” she says a little frazzled, like maybe that phone call had caught her off guard.
I hold onto her arm, making her stop and really look at me, she takes a breath with me. “It’s okay, and no it’s still pretty warm but you can always keep hold of this,” I say letting go of her and handing her back the sweatshirt she’s just returned.
It’s a little weird, a little primitive of me but seeing her in it this morning did things to me in so many ways. In that moment, I wanted everyone to know who’s clothes she was wearing, and I wanted to run my hands under it while she sat on my lap, naked in every way besides my jumper.
She takes it back, smiling at me as she does, almost like she can’t help it and I love it a little more than I should. Because when Katherine smiles, it’s like the whole world opens up in front of me just because I’ve made her smile for a minute.
“Where are we going?” she asks for the tenth time since we left Ella’s.
I was a little worried it was going to be awkward between us on the drive. But we’ve just been talking like two very normal people would. Like two people who do this all the time, go out together, do things together.
“The concept of a surprise really is lost on you Katherine isn’t it?” I ask her not taking my eyes off the road but I can feel her smiling at me.
“Alright, well are we nearly there?” she asks, shifting in the seat of my truck.
“We are not starting that,” I laugh knowing just what she’s doing. “It’s only like ten more minutes, but we have to walk the rest.” Pulling into a road and parking, I stop my truck steps away from a small beach.
“Walk? Where are we? Are you finally going to kill me?” she jokes, I watch her face still as I reach into the back seat not taking my eyes off her until I pass her a blanket.
“You carry this, I got the food.” We both jump out the truck and I lock up as she meets me on the footpath.
“This is starting to definitely look like a date,” she huffs, folding her arms over the blanket looking like a sulking child, but the way she pushes her lips out while she does, does nothing to stop me wanting to kiss her.
It would be so easy, just lean down and do it, but I think if I start I won’t stop. So I suppress it by leaning down and kissing her forehead. Which feels far too much like what a boyfriend would do but I try to move past it. “Come on, just up the little hill,” I say walking away from her. I hear her footsteps catch up with me.
We walk up what Kat decides as a damn mountain for a few minutes before we hit the flat path again and her hand brushes with mine as she talks. I don’t think she realises until I link my pinky with hers. She stops talking only for a second to look at them, she smiles to herself and then keeps going. She’s so busy looking around she totally misses the building right in front of her, until I stop moving and she walks into the side of me.
My hand goes to her waist stopping her from tripping in the dimming light, I pause for a beat knowing that touching her like this is a step too far for my self control. I let go of her slowly and point at the reason I’ve brought her out here.
“Oh my god, you didn’t,” she says, not breaking eye contact with the tall structure.
“I did.” We look up at the Stargaze Perch Lighthouse together for a moment before she walks away towards it more, I follow after her. It’s an old lighthouse, the red and white paint flaking all over, the door that used to lead into the base is sealed off now.
I honestly didn't even know it was here until she mentioned it, I spent all day working out how to get here. Having to ask Maddie in the most discreet way possible to see if she’d ever been up here before. But now that we are, I can see why people come up here, the view.
And I’m not meaning Kat, although watching her as she stands near the cliff edge looking out over to the cities across the water strikes me with something. A feeling I don’t think I’ve ever felt before and one I can only describe as longing. A longing to do this all the time, to surprise her and take her places she wants to go. To hold her hand as we walk and kiss her just because. It takes my breath away.
I try to cough it down as I walk over to join her. “Why did you want to come here, anyway? ”
“I don’t really know,” she says truthfully; that’s something I like about her the most. I never think she’s lying to me, even when we were fighting I still think she was telling me the truth. Even if some of the things were mean, god I’d rather that than her lying to me. “I think maybe I saw it on some tourist website when I first found out my soulmate was in Sydney.”
There it is again.
The unmistakable truth. The reason she’s here. I notice her still a little, like she wishes she hadn’t said it.
No matter how much I wish she’d lie to me about that one thing, I know she never will and I’m turning into someone I don’t recognise. I’m not even sure if that’s a bad thing, I haven’t been this open with someone other than Maddie and Ella in years and it’s a little scary I guess.
“We have about an hour until sunset, so I packed some food.”
“You’re telling me your favourite sandwich is peanut butter and jelly?” She laughs at me as the sun starts moving down the sky, moving the most beautiful light across the sea. She’s watching the sunset, but I’m watching her.
The way the light moves over her shows freckles I’ve never seen before, making me see colours in her hair I don’t think have even been discovered and somehow making her laugh sound even more like a song written by the angels.
“Excuse you, it’s called jam here,” I tease, popping another grape in my mouth. The laugh she gives me makes my insides melt .
God, it’s so peaceful here. We haven’t seen a single other person since we got here. The waves crashing on the rocks below the cliff are the only sound, apart from the occasional Cockatoo.
“Can I ask you something?” I look at her, one eyebrow cocked from where I’m sitting, because I know she’ll ask even if I say no anyway.
Her eyes dart away like she’s not sure why she wants to ask but it’s playing on her mind, and then the words just seem to fall out of her like she can’t help it. “You see, my best friend Bella, back in New York who I was on the phone to earlier, well she knows everything, more than me anyway and I was talking to her and she seems to think that maybe, you know, possibly…”
“Kat, what do you want to ask?” I ask knowing this babbling could go on until the sun goes down.
“Well, were you jealous at the Halloween party? Is that why you came looking for me?” she asks, playing with the fringe of the blanket next to her. I don’t get a chance to say anything when she starts again. “I mean I’m glad you did, you know find me and then again in the bathroom, I was just…”
“Wondering?” I cut her off as the memories of that night come back thick and fast. I was ready to completely rearrange Dylan’s face then, and I’m not saying I haven’t thought about it since. But when I saw her run off like that, I couldn’t help but forget about him entirely and only think of her and I’m glad I did. Seeing her so helpless and vulnerable kinda broke my heart. I’m not sure I’d see her the way I do now if I hadn’t seen her like that, like the curtain was pulled back and there stood this girl. Just a girl with all this stuff going on, not this enemy who stood for everything I was against. I didn’t care about any of that then I just cared about her, about helping her and getting her home.
“Yeah.” She’s sheepish now, a shy version of Kat I’ve never really gotten to see, apart from that first day in the shop .
If I’m going to have to be honest, then so does she. “Okay, how about a game of twenty questions then?”
She only nods her head at me like she’s not too sure how to feel about having to answer my questions.
I take a breath. “Yes.” I don’t elaborate on the answer in any way, even if I think she might want me to. If I’m honest, I’m too scared to, too afraid of what she’ll say if I even try and explain my feelings for her right now.
“Oh, okay this is a ‘yes or no’ game? I see… Okay, well, ask your question.” She pokes at my ribs making me finally look at her and I want to grab hold of her hand and pull her to me and kiss her until she forgets who she’s kissing and why we shouldn’t be.
But instead, I ask the question I’m sure will give me away, the one I’m sure will tell her everything she needs to know about my feelings. “Do you regret sleeping together last night?”
“No.” She doesn’t think about it, she’s so sure. “Do you?” she asks back.
“No.” A grin pulls on my lips only just visible by the lowering sun. Let's be honest, this is a pretty damn good date-not-date. I shouldn’t want this to be a date, because that means it’s not just a physical thing and that’s dangerous.
I brought her here to see the sun set, and yet we seem to be looking at each other more than the sky.
My next question sits on the tip of my tongue waiting for its turn ready to leap off. “Do you think we’d be together if all this soulmate stuff didn’t exist?” If she didn’t know how I felt before, she does now. But I’m kinda tired of pretending it’s not what we’re both wondering.
“No.” She laughs a little at the blank expression on my face as what I assume shows all my blood leaving it. “I come from a very long line of soulmates, I don’t think I’d be alive if soulmates didn’t exist.” I shake my head at her avoiding my question. “But I do think everyone who was meant to find each other, still would.” I don’t know if she means that we still would have found each other, but I like to think that’s what she means.
I watch as she stretches her legs out in front of her, hanging her head back letting her hair flow down her back. “Okay, do you really not want to be in love?” She doesn’t look at me as she asks and I have to hope she doesn’t either as I answer.
“I’ve spent most of my life alone.” I move closer to her, copying her position, facing towards the darkening sky. “Not always in the physical sense but in every way that mattered. I could be surrounded by people and still feel utterly alone. When Mum left, I spiralled. I thought—still think sometimes—that people are just going to leave.” She’s looking at me now, I can feel her eyes bore into my cheek. I can only assume the look on her face is pity or sadness. “It just felt safer to be on my own, but every now and again I wonder what it would be like to have that person. So to answer your very much not a yes or no question, no, I want to be in love. I'm just not sure I’d know how to, or that I’d be very good at it.”
The planets must have stopped spinning and pigs are now flying because I have somehow managed to stun Katherine Miller into silence. I sneak a look at her while I’m sure she’s not looking and she’s so still, it’s almost unsettling.
“That panic attack I had the other night wasn’t my first,” she says, breaking her own silence, a breeze blows through her hair, moving it out of her face, showing me the glassy look in her eyes. “That’s kinda been my life since I can remember, worry, panic, anxiety.” My hand slides to hers, my pinky wrapping around hers. Just to remind her I’m here, here for her. “My mind is so busy and loud I’m not sure how I can possibly have space for other people. I feel like such a burden sometimes, that I need so many people helping me but I’m not able to do the same because of my mental health. ”
My brows pull together, does she not know how she’s helped me? How she could never be a burden to me?How strong and brave she really is.
She’s been fighting so much, with herself, with the demons that I only got a small glimpse of the other night. I can’t beat them for her but I want to be holding her hand while we work through it together and I want to be the one to hold her when the day’s been long and hard. To cheer her on while she wins one battle after another. I want to be the one she turns to when she needs someone, when she just wants to talk things though.
She surprises me when she continues. “Sometimes I don’t think it’ll ever be quiet in here, it’s like having a hundred mini-mes telling me so many different things, it’s hard to know who’s telling the truth, and some of them are mean. The only time it seems to go quiet is when…”
She pauses and my heart is in my throat because I know what I want her to say. “When?” I push because I have to know?
She finally turns to me, our eyes connecting and hers holding mine like she’s searching for something. “When—when I’m around you.” She moves closer to me. “I take up far too much space. I’m not sure I’m going to be very good at being in love either.” When her eyes hit mine, there's a glint in them like she might cry.
And she might not be the only one. This amazing, beautiful, kind, full of warmth, ball of sunshine—my Sunshine. How can she think that? How can I convince her all the things she’s built in her mind aren’t true? I’m stuck, I don’t know what to tell her and I’m not sure anything I do say will be enough.
We’re still just watching each other's faces, she just laid her soul out in front of me and it’s beautiful, a little broken but not beyond repair. “Kat, I—” What’s the right thing to say? Maybe it’s not about saying the right thing, maybe it’s just about saying something true? How do I tell her I want her to take up all of my space? I take a breath. “ You know you're the first person in a long time to make me feel seen and supported. That’s what you do, Kat. You literally make everyone you meet feel happy and safe to just be around you. People can be themselves with you, I think you already know how to love. I think you just need to learn to accept the love other people are trying to give you, too.”
She finally looks away from me, she lets go of my little finger and pushes her hand through her hair. The way it falls back down around her face has me wanting to tuck it behind her ear, but I don’t. “I like the view from up here. It’s peaceful and still. It makes me feel like I’m alone for a while. The city back home is so busy, you're never really alone,” she tells me, avoiding everything I just told her, which is fine. I just hope she listens to it at some point.
“Do you want to be alone?”
“Yes… No.” She stops and looks at me. “I want to be alone, but with you.”
This right here, this is peace, this is calm and quiet. It’s all I could want and yet I feel like I’m stealing it all from someone else because someone else should be feeling this with her. Taking her calm and imprinting it into their skin for hard days. Someone else should be stealing looks at her while the sun goes down and the air cools.
But it’s me, I’m the one looking at her right now, taking in every part of her. Soaking up every ray for later when it’s dark. “The suns almost set,” I tell her, my voice sounding foreign to me, shaky and unsure. Nothing like the me that wound up in her room last night, trying to take every bit, any bit of her she’d give me.
“I know.” She watches as the sky becomes a mix of oranges and pinks, and I watch her as her face takes it all in. The sun moves below the ocean and disappears into the watery grave for the evening, the sky engulfing into an almost darkness and only lights coming from the town across from the hill we’re on .
Neither of us make a move, instead she turns to look at me. “Thank you.” She sounds small and shy, equally just as much not the her from last night.
I move closer to her knowing I don’t have many more of these moments left. Even if she doesn’t find her soulmate, she’ll soon realise whatever we’re doing is a lost cause. I’m selfish, and I’m going to steal as many moments with her that I can get before the truth sinks into her bones.
My hand brushes against hers on the blanket and I feel like a teenager again. The electric feeling that runs up my arm and straight to my chest. I’m somehow more nervous than I was last night, in these simple moments with her my mind races.
I tilt my head back to fill my lungs as much as possible. The sky above us is littered with the stars you wouldn’t see in the city. She follows my gaze up to the sky and I look back down at her. “It’s beautiful,” she tells me, unaware of my gaze on her.
“You’re beautiful, Sunshine.”
She lowers her head slowly to look at me again, our faces so close I can feel every uneven breath she lets out hit my face and it goes right through me. “We should head back.” But she doesn’t move, like she’s stuck there just like me.
“Is that what you want Kat?” If it were me though, I’d live in this darkness with her forever if she asked.
“I don’t know what I want,” she responds with a bit of frustration and sadness in her voice. “Just sitting here, with you, everything just feels so—”
“Small?”
“Yeah, like everything I’m always worrying about has just kinda stopped.” A tear rolls down her cheek and my heart cracks in two.
I was so wrong, so incredibly wrong, about her it hurts.
I’ll take her back home in a minute. We’ll stop and get ice cream from that place near the store I heard her say she likes and I’ll let her play Taylor Swift all the way home. I'm going to make her smile again. But right now, I need to hold her.
She moves with ease as I pull her into my lap, her head tucking under my chin perfectly. And I just hold her. I just need to feel her steady heart beat against my chest and smell the vanilla scent she wears so well.
A shaky breath leaves her as she relaxes into me, her hands hold on to the arm wrapped around her. She shifts, wrapping her arms around me, and I hold her.
I hold her until I’m sure she’s not going to cry again. I hold her until the sun has truly been drowned by the sea. I hold her until she kisses me lightly on the cheek.
I hold her until it feels like it’s holding me together too.