Chapter 30
Now
Kitty,
I have spent years trying to find the words to express how I feel about you, and now that you lie snoring on my shoulder, I think I’m finally ready.
Just saying that I love you doesn’t feel like enough.
How can three words be enough to tell you that every time I’m with you, you make my heart pound so wildly that I can hardly breathe?
And yet at the same time I never feel more at peace?
‘I love you’ can’t explain how I only ever truly feel like myself when I’m with you, as if all I am in between those moments is just a man without a soul, and a boy without a dream.
Telling you I love you doesn’t touch the surface on how much I need you when you’re not here.
Those words aren’t vast enough to explain to you that I don’t even feel human when I’m with you, Ava.
I’m an animal, whose only instinct is to stay by your side.
But I do love you. I love you, Ava Matthews.
I have loved you since we were eight years old and you couldn’t climb a tree without getting a splinter, and I could hardly form a sentence in your presence.
I couldn’t explain it then, but I felt it.
I have never not felt it. A decade of friendship has turned this into a love that I know will last for decades more.
I have made all of the wrong decisions, I let my jealousy blind me, let my fear of losing you get in the way of it all, but please don’t tell me I’m too late.
If you’ll have me, I’ll apply to finish college with you in London.
I would move to the edge of the world if it meant I could be closer to you.
I would sleep on that tiny patch of your roof, under a starless sky, just as long as I knew I’d see you when I woke up.
I’m going to put it all right, Kitty. I’m going to fix my mistakes. I promise.
If you feel for me even half of what I feel for you, meet me back here, in the treehouse, before you have to leave.
I love you.
Yours always,
Wolfie
My chest heaves with the weight of my breaths. I feel like I am collapsing in on myself every time I read another word. That letter has sat in that box for two years. Two whole years, he has thought I rejected him. Two years I have wasted.
I refuse to waste any more time.
Still clad in my pyjamas, I leave my shoes at the door as I race across the fields through wet grass and cold mud.
The sunrise glows amber across the horizon, but I don’t stop to admire it.
The barn is my first stop, but when I swing open the door, there’s no one there, apart from Hope and her babies who yelp at sun in their eyes.
Sprinting into the yard of Hope Farm, it’s Will I find first, yawning on the bench as he pulls on his boots.
‘Where’s Jacob?’ I pant.
‘Good morning to you too,’ he grumbles, his voice hoarse from his early start.
‘Where is he?’ I rush, too impatient for his grouchiness.
‘Jesus, he’s in the orchard.’ Will yawns again. ‘He’s been getting up early and heading down there.’
I rush, grabbing his keys from the bench beside him. ‘You mind if I borrow these?’
I don’t wait to hear his reply as I hop into his tractor and strike up the ignition. I’ve seen Grandad drive his Betty, and I have been in this cab with Jacob so many times. How hard can it be?
Will swears loudly as I pull out of the farm, but he doesn’t bother to chase me down.
The tractor hums across the fields until the orchard comes into view, but even with my foot to the floor, it isn’t fast enough.
Abandoning the machine in the middle of a boggy pasture, I run the rest of the acre to him until the mud hits my knees and I am heaving for breath.
Jacob doesn’t notice me at first. He sits in the back of his truck, watching the sunrise across the orchard, as the last of the autumn sun fills the gaps in the trees.
Picking up an apple that had been forgotten in the harvest, I throw it just hard enough to hit the back of his shoulder and burst into a juice against his shirt.
‘What the—’ Jacob turns around, ready to fight back, but when he spots me, his face softens and he waves a nervous hand in my direction.
Taking a moment to absorb the scene, I can feel the tears prickling in my eyes again.
I let that man believe for two years that I didn’t love him too.
That I wanted to be friends, and nothing more.
And here he stands, shrouded in sunlight, waving at me as though his heart isn’t broken, as though seeing me doesn’t renew his pain.
Unable to keep from him any longer, I storm forward, waving the letter maniacally in my hand.
‘I love you, too,’ I call out as loudly as I can, despite being out of breath only seconds ago, but Jacob only looks at me perplexed.
‘What?’ he says with furrowed brows.
I’m close enough to reach out to grab him now.
Trying to summon the words again, I begin breathily, ‘I love—’, before giving up on words entirely, and pressing my lips to his.
Without a second thought, he wraps his arms around my waist and lifts me into the back of his truck, pressing his body between my legs.
With each second that passes, the intensity grows.
With him smeared in the mud from my run, he pulls away, just as breathless, just as hot.
‘I found your letter.’ He’s close enough that I only need to whisper, and his eyes clear with a look of innocent happiness as the weight of my words finally hits him.
‘My letter?’
I nod, holding him by the cheeks. ‘I never got it. I must have cleared it away in a rush with all of Granny’s things and it’s sat in that box ever since.’
His eyes search my face. ‘I thought … I … I waited all day for you. Then I found out you’d already left.’ He lets out a breathy laugh. ‘I thought I was too late.’ Jacob buries his head in my chest, and his warm breath spreads across my body until I curl into the closeness.
‘I saw you with Pen that morning,’ I explain. ‘I went to look for you after I found the other note, and you were there with her. You looked so happy.’
‘Other note?’ He stands to his full height.
‘The note that said “I’m sorry”?’
Jacob shakes his head. ‘I went to Pen to break it all off. I knew she liked me and I was worried I’d been leading her on, so I had to set the record straight before I could let myself start anything with you.
I had started writing a note, but I couldn’t wait.
It wasn’t fair to not tell Pen in person, so I screwed up the note and I asked her to meet me in the café first thing that morning. ’
I shake my head, wishing I could go back and punch sixteen-year-old Ava so hard in the face. ‘And all this time … ?’
‘I thought … Well, I thought you just wanted to be friends. I thought if I could keep reminding myself that, I could keep myself away from you. I tried dating Pen again, tried to help you with everything you needed to get away from here …’
‘Because you thought I wanted to get away from you? From the farm?’
‘Because you made it clear that your future is in Milan,’ he says softly.
I think about what Mum said this morning. Love is bigger than any country; it will travel with you. You don’t have to leave it behind.
‘Can’t I have both?’ I ask. Jacob looks at me, confused.
‘I love you, Wolfie. I always have. I can’t believe I have wasted all these years not telling you, not showing you that I want you – just as much as I want my future in Milan.
I’ve been so wrapped up in my grief, my jealousy …
I—I’ve been so stupid. But I want you, if you’ll have me. ’
Jacob just grins his wide, chipped-tooth grin, and I know his answer already.
Entwining my fingers through his hair, I press my lips again to his, and with just that moment of contact, none of it matters any more.
All the misunderstandings, all the crossed wires, and the lost time.
None of it matters any more as my body presses to his.
My soul finds its way home, and my heart is given in its entirety to my best friend.