Chapter 52 #2
By the time she finished telling him, it was afternoon.
Sunlight filtered through the vines, dappling their skin with shadows.
She felt strange inside. Not a bad sensation.
A weightlessness, as if she could flap her arms and fly because she’d been carrying a boulder for so long and now that it had been dropped, her body wanted to soar.
But not a good sensation, either. An emptiness where she had felt something buried opened like a void, needing something to feed it.
Nora rubbed her chest where it still hurt. There was still a little more to tell.
“I wish—I wished—for a long time that it had been me, not him. So I wouldn’t have had to see what it did to my parents.
What I did to them,” she said. “I lived…but I didn’t want to.
I survived, but no one remembered that I had.
I don’t think that…I was enough. I know it’s stupid to think that way.
That everyone was suffering and grieving.
But, well, here we are. And this is how I feel. ”
Her hand clutched his tightly. Shame kept her forehead pressed to his chest.
“I’m alive,” she said again. “And…until you, I don’t think I ever wanted to be. How stupid—how awful.”
Tears, as she had expected, finally came, pressing in her throat and threatening to fall.
“My mom—she won’t even talk to me anymore.
She used to be a children’s book illustrator.
She’d draw the cutest pictures. After Theo…
she couldn’t do it anymore. She said she couldn’t stop imagining him—all the books and things he would never see.
I…I couldn’t stand it. Watching her fade while we’re both still alive.
And I…wasn’t doing great, either. I went through so many rounds of therapy that the sessions were on autopilot.
And all I could think when they were telling me the right things—it wasn’t my fault, people deal with grief in weird ways, my mom was transferring her own pain and guilt onto me—was that they were all lying to help me feel better. ”
Nora laughed—an instinct at this point to do so—before continuing.
“Joe didn’t want me too far from him anymore, especially after what happened with my dad.
” She paused long enough to decide not to tell Airik what she thought her father had done.
Something told her that Airik might’ve already guessed it and seen shadows of it in her.
“He wanted me up on the Abeona, where it was ‘safer’ for me, so he could keep an eye on me, which is so pathetic for a woman my age. But…I didn’t want to fight.
He’s hard to argue with. So I tried to beg my mom one more time to let us rebuild our family—what’s left of it—and she said it was best I leave Earth.
That…my love is cursed and she wanted it far from her. ”
She stopped, wiping her eyes. Airik held her tighter, a small noise escaping him that broke her heart even more than it had before.
But now that she’d started, she couldn’t stop.
“After I left, she said I didn’t exist. That I took everything from her and—my own mom, you know?
She was supposed to love me. Forgive me.
And—she can’t. She shouldn’t have to. I don’t deserve it. ”
Nora took a deep breath, preparing to speak the next words. Her head sank lower into Airik’s chest. “Anyway…I’m sorry. That now, I lo—”
Airik lifted her face with a finger beneath her chin. “Do not be sorry for this feeling that we’ve found. I’m not. Please…tell me that you’re not sorry.”
A tender warmth bloomed in her chest. Small and strange. There was bright hope and sadness in Airik’s eyes, waiting for her next words. Because he didn’t know this was a wave too—what she felt for him—just as out of her control as the waves that day had been.
Even though she wanted this more than anything—to be swept far and deep and never to be let go, an impulse forced her to remind him of how she would be once they settled in their real lives, however that might look.
“You’re right…I’m not sorry. But how can anyone be happy with someone like me? Someone who isn’t…normal.”
“Normal?” His brows dropped a little in confusion. “What is normal?”
The weight of grief that had once crushed Nora into silence would have stopped her from talking. But it was now gone, and nothing existed to force her to pause.
“Someone who isn’t hurting all the fucking time,” she cried.
“I’m so afraid…that this new feeling, that even though I’m happy—it won’t last. It’ll end.
Because I always think—my own mom can’t stand me.
” She looked down, biting her lip. “It hasn’t hurt so much with you… But it’ll come back—it always does.”
Her heart beat so hard, the skin of her lips throbbed. The sound of Airik’s breathing and Lucky’s swishing tail were all that kept her present.
For a moment, there weren’t any words, and Airik’s hand stroking her hair slowed.
When he finally spoke, his voice was soft—barely a whisper.
“I don’t know what it is to lose a child.
I don’t know what pain holds your mother’s mind.
” His arms slid around her belly, holding her close.
He dropped his head into her shoulder, his breath hot and shivering.
“But I don’t believe anyone could ever stop loving you, Nora.
Not your mother. Not anyone. But I know it has hurt, and her pain has been so great that she could not give you what you needed then or now.
I wish I could fill what you have lost. I think—I have enough to give it back. But—”
His voice cut off, but he held her so tight, she couldn’t turn to him.
“But I haven’t felt my mother’s love in a long time, either. Or my father’s. Just like you. Do you think…that neither of us should have what we’ve found with one another, only because we once couldn’t hold on to it tightly enough?”
Something wet fell on her shoulder.
Nora pushed away, the buzzing in her brain deafening. A sea of blue shimmer lit his eyes, streaming down his cheeks. What had she said? Why had she said it like that?
Cupping his cheeks, frantically trying to erase the harm of her words, she said, “No, Airik—that’s not what I mean. I don’t mean you. I never meant you. You deserve everything. Oh god, I’m so fucking sorry—”
“I wish,” he said, taking her hands and kissing his tears on her fingers, “that you would be as careful with your heart as you are with mine. So kind you are with me. Why not with yourself?”
Oh. Goose bumps rose on her skin.
Oh.
“I…I don’t know. Maybe because…no one has asked me to do so.” She heard her own words. They sounded pathetic. But it was the truth, and Airik deserved it. “I’m not…okay.”
Maybe sensing her instinct to hide, he kept her face turned toward him, peering at her with those eyes of his that pierced the darkness with their own light.
“You don’t need to be okay to have me—for us—to have this.
” He swallowed, rubbing his cheek against her hand like a puppy.
“I am not okay either—worried for food, danger, and if we’ve been forgotten.
But still…I’ve never been so happy to be where I am.
Because here, I can have you. I didn’t think I could feel this.
Ever. And none of it has been because you are okay.
It has been because—I think—you have carried my pain, too.
And you’ve seen mine even when I didn’t want you to. ”
She opened her mouth. Airik ran a thumb over her lip.
“You do not have to be okay with me,” he whispered.
“It is not what makes my heart full with you. If it happens again—if your sadness comes—I will remind you of all the parts of you that deserve to be alive and loved.” He lowered his lips to her ear.
“Which is all of you, cheranna. No part of you deserves less.”
Her heart stumbled, a tingling and lightheadedness flushing through her. The emptiness of moments before solidified into…something.
Was it…hope?
Nothing had been fixed, of course. But there was no urgency to fix things, either.
Cautious happiness inched over her skin. She could have Airik. Maybe begin to forgive herself. Even if others never would.
Perhaps sensing that enough words had been shared, Airik slid down the railing so that he lay on his back, with Nora on his front. Lucky whined but crawled beside them, covering them both with his tail.
It was still daylight, but her eyelids grew heavy.
They had all earned the right to rest.