45. Chapter 44
Chapter 44
James
S he looks about as shocked as I thought she would be and yet the look still catches me off guard. Even in her turtle-neck jumper and jeans, she’s still the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen; even in the dreary background of an office and grey clouds showing through the big windows behind her.
It’s so out of place for me to see her like this, she’s almost not My Katherine but when she looks at me, everything is the same, as if we’re standing on the sandy beach in Gull’s Bay again.
“What are you doing here?” she asks, still at least a foot away from me, like if she gets any closer, we’ll combust, which I think I just might if I can’t hold her in some way.
“I missed you.” Before she replies to me, she grabs my hand leading to me to an empty office room, pulling me in the room and then she lets go of my hand like I’ve burnt her and she moves so far away from me, I feel cold all over.
She leans on the big table in the middle of the room and runs a hand through her hair. “Don’t say shit like that. I left because you didn’t want this. Don’t say things like I missed you when you’re the one who didn’t want me. You’re not allowed to miss me.” Her voice shakes at the end, and I just want to wrap her up in my arms and make it all okay. How could she ever think I don’t want her ?
“Katherine.” I can do this, tell her how I feel, she hasn’t run away yet, so that’s a good sign. “When my mum left, I decided I didn’t need to love anyone, ever. I decided it was too painful to ever give someone that kind of power over me and soulmates and stones were just another thing having a power over me. All I wanted was control over everything I possibly could. I wanted to control everything I felt.”
She just looks at me, the look on her face unchanged, pained and angry.
“When you walked into the shop that day, you were just another reminder of everything wrong with my life and with me. You were so open to love and it just made me sick to look at you because of that reminder.”
“Gee, thanks,” she says half under her breath because I know she just can’t help but say something back at me.
“Then I got to know you and you were just as much of a pain in the ass as I thought you’d be but I just couldn’t stay away from you. Everything seemed to draw me to you in a way I just couldn’t understand and no matter what I did, how much I tried I couldn’t stop myself. I couldn’t control it. I couldn’t control my feelings around you.”
I fumble around in my pocket, her eyes only shifting slightly when she sees it. I take a few steps closer to her.
It glows just like hers did, it glows so bright I can’t quite look right at it, but she does. “This has been in a box under my bed since the day my mum left. I never wanted to think about it again but I never threw it out. It just sat there gathering dust, and maybe somewhere really deep down I just knew one day I’d meet someone who would change my mind. I met you. You’ve been like a fucking tornado in my life Katherine.”
My fist tightens around the glowing stone in my hand and I slide it into my back pocket .
“I fucked it up, I over-reacted and blew up. I know I can’t live without you. Not now—not now that you’ve been a part of it, I can’t just forget about you. I’m so sorry I took that moment away from you, and I’ll spend the rest of my life making it up to you if you’ll let me. I’m sorry it wasn’t what you deserved, I know how important to you it was and I guess I was just so angry and all the feelings about my mum came rushing back, so much so that I missed the part where the girl I love is my soulmate.”
“James, what?” She’s so close to me now that if I reached out I could touch her but I don’t because the minute I do I’ll forget everything I need to tell her.
“I love the ridiculous amount of sunshine you have inside of you and how you can make anyone feel like you’re their best friend the second you meet them. I love the way you read a book and the way you smile while you do. I love how you make me feel when I’m around you, like I can do anything. I love how after everything you’ve been through, when you had every right to hate the world, you didn’t. You just kept going, kept believing in love and magic. You’re my magic, you’re my Sunshine.
“I knew I would love you the moment I saw you and I was just too god damn scared and stupid to see it, it turns out that love and hate feel far too similar and I just wanted to believe I could keep controlling it.”
It seems like once I start confessing my feelings I can’t stop.
“If I could take it all back I would. Or maybe I wouldn’t. Maybe this was meant to be our story.” I reach for her, cupping her cheek in my hand. She doesn’t move away from me but leans into my touch and I’m warm all over. “I remember everything, I remember the way you taste, the way you move. The way your breath catches before you bite your lip and the way your body moulds into mine so perfectly. I remember the feeling of kissing you for the first time and knowing I didn’t want to kiss anyone else ever. ”
I watch her chew her bottom lip before she talks. “I missed you, too.” She finally smiles at me and I know I would suffer flying for twenty four hours again just to have her smile at me. “I get why you were angry, you trusted me and I broke that by having my stone with me. I still don’t understand how it got there, but that’s not the point. All you wanted was for me to want you because I did and not because of my stone but that’s the thing I did. I wanted to be allowed to fall for you so I tested to see if you were on the day of the wedding,” she confesses and it’s like all the air has been stuck out the room.
“What? So you… we did all that stuff after even though you thought we weren’t?”
“It hurt every part of me knowing, or thinking, you weren’t my soulmate. Because I didn’t understand how I could feel that way for you without you being my soulmate and you could call me scared and stupid too.”
I lock my fingers between hers and we just look at each other. I know what she’s just said and what she meant by it even if she’s not quite saying it in. Because I know her, I know every little thing she doesn’t want to be known. The smell of her fills my head and I take a big breath in hoping that somehow this will all be enough, that I will be enough. That she won’t want me to leave, that she’ll let me stay.
With her.
I lean my forehead against hers and my other hand goes to her arm as I work my way up, up to her shoulder and then her face. Holding on to her cheek, I run my thumb over her bottom lip and she leans into my touch. If we weren’t in an office, at her new job, I’d stay like this forever with her.
I watch as she opens her mouth and closes it again, and then she looks up at me.“I love you, James. ”
And that’s it. That’s all I need to press my lips to hers and it’s like we’re experts at it now, I don’t even have to think about how our lips mould together.
And I don’t need her to tell me why she loves me, I don’t need a speech or a list because I just know she does because kissing her is like coming home.
Kissing her is the only thing I want to do for the rest of my life. She’s the only person I want to do it with, forever. She pulls away from me after what feels like forever but even that will never be enough.
“Kat, I will love you for as long as I live, I don’t ever want to know what a world without you in it is like.” A tear rounds down her cheek and I wipe it away with my thumb. I never want to see her cry, but I’ll be there every time she does. I’ll piece it all back together again.
We both stand up properly again and she takes my hand in hers again leading me back to the desk she was sitting at when I arrived.
“Tommy, would it maybe be okay if I left early?” she asks the man sitting at what I assume is her desk, he leans back in the chair, the biggest smile spreading across his face as he looks at our hands.
“I’ll see you on Monday. Don’t forget to take this, make sure you read over page seven for me,” he tells her, getting up from the chair and walking away.
She grabs her stuff and the pages he handed her and then we walk back to the elevator.
“Do you think everyone heard all that?” she whispers to me, and honestly yes probably. I look out of the door back towards the other desks, people smiling and chatting but I don’t care if they did, I want to tell every stranger I see that I love her and she loves me too.
When we reach the street again we start walking, I don’t know where we’re going, I don’t care as long as she’s next to me. I turn to look at her as I walk next to her and she’s already looking at me. “You know, flying all the way here to tell me you love me is pretty romantic,” she states and that makes my cheeks warm thinking about how she’s right. “This is so cliché, it’s making you sick isn’t it?” she asks.
“Just a little, but I’d do it a hundred more times just to have you next to me, Sunshine,” I tell her and I don’t think I’ve ever meant anything more in my life.
Truthfully, it’s like a revolting romcom and yet I couldn’t regret it if I tried. I’d do it all again if it meant she would be walking down a random street in New York with me. In that moment I realise I’d do it all again for her, for my soulmate.
No matter how reluctant I had been about falling in love, here I am walking into a completely unknown future with her.