38. Every Almost Leads to You #8
Reyna's eyes had filled, she wasn't hiding it. The rose held warm and steady between them.
"You said you've always loved me," Charlie said, softer now. "Even across the universe."
"I have."
"Yeah." Charlie pressed her palm flat over the rose above Reyna's heart, felt it beat beneath her hand, and her own answer it.
Her hand pressed over the place she'd first touched a stranger on a kitchen floor and hadn't known she was touching the rest of her life.
"Me too. I just took the long way here. Twenty-nine years and forty light-years and one very confusing Monday. "
Reyna laughed out loud, and Charlie smiled, wet and helpless, before it faded into something quieter, something certain.
"Here's the thing," she said. "It was always going to be this.
You and me. Though, I didn't know it. Frankly, there's no way I could have known it, I was galaxies away living a completely different life.
But I see now that every part of my life, even Katie, every single piece of it was already pointed here.
At you. Like the answer was written down somewhere before I ever got to do the work. "
Her voice thickened. "I don't believe in a lot, Rey.
You know that. I believe in things that can be measured, mostly.
But you and me? I believe in this. I believe this was inevitable.
You were inevitable. Whatever I was doing back there, whoever I thought I was going to be, every road I was ever on was already bending toward this floor, this ship, this exact second with your arms around me. I just couldn't see it from inside."
"And now?" she asked.
"Now I can see it," Charlie said. "The whole line. All the way back to the beginning. And I wouldn't change one inch of the long way here, because every bit of it was the road to you." She pressed her forehead to Reyna's. "It was always going to be you. It was never going to be anything else."
Reyna laughed, tears spilling down her cheeks. "Oh yeah? How are you so sure?"
Charlie lifted her head to look at Reyna. "It couldn't have been. I checked the math."
And then Charlie smiled as Reyna's laugh echoed through her room, filling the space with one of Charlie's favorite sounds.
"I love you," Charlie said.
"I love you," Reyna replied, taking a staggering breath before she continued. “Bigger than the universe.”
Charlie felt those words move through her in a way she couldn’t remember than any others doing in her life. Except for one phrase.
I love you. More than the sky, the stars, and the universe.
“Wow,” Charlie said softly. “You love me a lot.”
Reyna laughed again, her voice soft. “Yeah, I do.”
And then Charlie leaned down and kissed her, just as Reyna covered Charlie's hand with her own, the rose glowing gently between their fingers, neither of them letting go.
TWO HOURS LATER
The room had gone quiet the way rooms only do very late, the cycle lights pulled down to almost nothing, the low hum of the Emberkind the only sound left.
Reyna lay half over her, head tucked under Charlie's chin.
She had one arm thrown across Charlie's middle, her weight warm and heavy, entirely trusting in a way Charlie was still getting used to.
Charlie had one hand moving slow up and down the bare skin of Reyna's back, going nowhere in particular.
Neither of them was asleep, but neither of them was trying to be.
"I want to tell you something," Reyna said, stroking Charlie's jaw with her fingertips.
"Tell me anything," Charlie said softly.
"I want you to hear my name."
Charlie looked at her, confused. "Your name?"
"Mm hmm."
"Uh... Rey... as just proven, I already know your name."
"Yeah, but I want you to hear it."
"I don't understand."
Then Reyna moved her fingers from Charlie's jaw along her neck to the nape just behind.
Charlie's eyes fell shut at the touch until she felt Reyna's fingers hit the spot where the Voxlink was embedded.
Her eyes opened again, and Reyna was looking at her.
Then, she felt Reyna press against an indentation on the Voxlink.
Suddenly, all the words in Reyna's room, the manuals on the desk and reports laid on the nightstand, blurred into symbols and marks that made absolutely no sense to her.
"What—"
But Reyna pressed a finger to Charlie's lips, silencing her. Very effectively, Charlie might add.
She stopped talking.
Reyna took her hand away from Charlie's mouth, then placed that hand on her chest. Just like she had the day Charlie landed in Borran's kitchen. Before the Voxlink. Before Charlie's whole life changed.
"You."
Reyna raised an eyebrow at her, which Charlie immediately took to mean shut the hell up.
Charlie nodded.
Reyna pressed her hand to her chest again.
And then she opened her mouth.
A sound unlike anything Charlie had ever heard in her life, a sound that she felt more than heard, came from Reyna as soft as a song.
Charlie never realized that sounds could make you see colors, especially colors that created images you could only because of this sound, a key to visions unlike any other.
The sound reminded her of snow falling in a forest in deep winter, pristine and clear. But it also reminded her of the roaring water of a river mouth, pouring into the pools below. It sounded like a flower petal finding a voice at the same time that a lion roared with such fervor over its pride.
Charlie was captivated. Hell, she felt transformed.
She stared into Reyna's eyes and felt her world shift on its axis.
"That's you," Charlie whispered, knowing Reyna's Voxlink was still active.
Reyna nodded.
"That's your name. In Kaelari?"
Reyna nodded once more.
"Well, shit."
Reyna laughed, warm and settling, as she reached up Charlie's neck again and pressed against the Voxlink.
"God, your name is beautiful, Rey."
"Yeah?" Reyna asked, almost shy.
"Yeah," was all Charlie could say back.
Then Reyna pulled her hand away from Charlie again, but this time reached up her own neck to what Charlie assumed was her Voxlink. She saw the muscles in her wrist move before Reyna brought her hand back and placed it against Charlie's heart. She looked up at Charlie expectantly.
Charlie knew immediately what Reyna wanted to hear.
"Charlie."
Reyna gasped softly before a small laugh escaped her lips. Charlie saw tears begin to pool in her eyes. Reyna closed her eyes before pressing her forehead gently against Charlie's shoulder.
Charlie closed her eyes as she leaned against Reyna, and felt her chest explode in an emotion so fierce.
But then a tapping, in the same spot against her heart.
Charlie opened her eyes and saw Reyna looking at her, and tapped against Charlie's chest again.
She wants to hear it again.
Charlie pulled one of her hands from Reyna's waist and brought it up to cover Reyna's own against her.
"Charlie."