Chapter 8
Eight
“Go to the meadow and forget everything.”
He couldn’t stop smiling. Not in the suave, ironic way he usually wore like a second skin, but with a kind of easy joy, like someone had told him he’d just been granted a second chance at something he thought he’d ruined long ago.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” I asked, flustered.
He didn’t answer right away, just shook his head slightly, like he couldn’t believe his own grin. “You’ll laugh.”
“I laugh at most things.”
His eyes gleamed. “I like watching you eat.”
And then, without warning, he grabbed my hand—and I let him. His fingers were warm and calloused. The contact felt instinctive, like we’d always held each other like this. He pulled me toward a staircase that curved up into the old part of the city, two steps at a time.
“Hey! Slow down!” I half-laughed, half-protested. “Some of us have, you know, organs that still haven’t fully forgiven us.”
He looked back over his shoulder with a boyish grin, his free hand brushing through his slightly wavy hair. This man was high like a kite right now. “You’ll survive.”
I did. Barely. We climbed until the murmur of the sea became faint, replaced by the quiet hum of street lamps and clinking cutlery from patio dinners.
Paul moved like someone who had remembered he had a body, a good one, and a purpose.
Like something had been unlocked inside him, and now he couldn’t stop.
I didn’t want him to. It was amazing to watch him that way.
Careless, liberated from something, intoxicated with jazz and the warm sea breeze.
Halfway up the stairs, he stopped so abruptly I bumped into him. He turned. That smile again: crooked, dazzling.
“With me,” he said, voice low and charged, “you can go to the meadow and forget everything.”
I blinked. “What?”
He said nothing more. Just kept walking, slower this time, until we reached the top.
Meadow. Was that a metaphor? A memory? A promise?
I didn’t ask. I didn’t want to break the spell.
People passed us with glasses of wine in hand, couples laughing beneath string lights.
But they all seemed like a blur to me. This night was more than I had expected already, and my lungs started giving in from the vastness of emotions and chasing Paul up the stairs.
Finally, when we reached a quiet corner lined with ivy and soft shadows, I stopped.
“I need to catch my breath.”
His brow furrowed. “Are you okay?”
I nodded, pressing a palm gently to my side. “The scars. Sometimes they pull when I walk too fast. It’s not a big deal, just… tight.”
He looked at me like I’d just handed him a piece of my soul. We sat on the steps, hidden between a fountain and a closed bookstore. He passed me his water bottle from the side pocket of his jacket, and I took a sip. The silence was companionable.
“So,” he said, after a moment. “What happened?”
I stiffened.
“You don’t have to tell me,” he added quickly. “But I know what people at the office say. Some of it’s probably bullshit. And I…” He looked down at our joined hands. “I want to know the real story. From you.”
I stared at the cobblestones.
“It was a training flight. Solo. Completely routine, like dozens I already practiced before.” My voice sounded far away, even to me.
“I don’t remember most of it. My brain… was kind enough to shut it off.
But apparently the thermals changed all of a sudden, and I waited for too long and started losing control over her.
I had seconds to decide. I tried to glide her down gently, but it was too late. ”
A pause.
“Impact shattered the wings, the body, and part of the cockpit. Glass was everywhere. I was trapped. For… long, at least it seemed like ages.”
Paul didn’t move and didn’t speak. Just listened, thumb brushing small, soothing circles over my palm.
“They said I screamed for my dad when they pulled me out.” I let out a short, shaky laugh. “I don’t remember. Two weeks in a coma, second and third-degree burns. Broken ribs, a punctured lung. My hand…” I showed it to him: the faint tremble, the scars tracing my forearm. “It doesn’t like stress.”
He lifted it gently and raised it to his lips. Kissed the spot just below my wrist.
“Jesus,” he whispered.
“I have nightmares. Sometimes I wake up thinking I made the wrong call, that maybe I panicked. That maybe it’s my fault.”
“You’re here,” he said, so quietly I barely heard it. “You made it, and that’s no coincidence.”
I blinked against the heat in my eyes.
“I can’t fly again. Not yet and maybe not ever, but I fake it every day. I wake up and I pretend that I’m fine, and I go to work, and get lost in spreadsheets and emails. And this.” I smiled shyly.
“You were never pretending,” he said. “I saw it the first time I looked at you.”
I tilted my head. “And what did you see?”
“That you were trying so hard not to let anyone see you.” He paused. “Which made me want to look harder.”
We were so close now, knees brushing while the night hummed around us.
“My brother’s the only one who doesn’t treat me like I’m made of glass,” I said. “And Mia… she doesn’t flinch.”
“She’s good.”
“She is.” I looked at him. “What about you? What are you doing here, Paul?”
He rubbed a hand through his hair. “That’s a longer story.”
“I’ve got time.”
He let out a breath. “Born near Portland, Oregon. My mom’s American, dad’s Canadian, Vancouverite, so we moved back and forth a lot. Went to high school in Cedar, just outside Nanaimo. Hated it, loved it, moved to the States, had my own place there, but came back.”
“Why’d you come back?”
He looked down at the staircase. “Someone. A girl. We broke it off, hot mess toward the end. Didn’t find the point in staying any longer, even though I didn’t have anything here. Apart from a high school friend who helped me out, and a couple of blues records.”
“Do you always run toward chaos?”
“Only if it promises to be interesting.” We both laughed.
“Do you like it here?” I asked.
“Some parts.”
“Like?”
He looked at me for a long time.
“Gabriola Island.”
My breath hitched.
“What?” I said.
“I used to hike there with my younger brother. Favorite view in the world.”
“No way.”
He frowned. “What?”
“That’s mine too. My dad used to fly us over Gabriola in the summer. We’d do lazy glides over the bay. It’s peaceful, like the whole island was made for us. That’s why I don’t mind Tommo too much, I can watch it from the office terrace.”
Paul stared at me like I’d just spoken in tongues.
I smiled. “Maybe we passed each other once or twice, two strangers.”
“This can’t be happening,” he said, suddenly dropping his face into his hands. “This, what is this?” He looked as if he desperately wanted to shake it off: the destiny of it, the impossibility of it, but couldn’t.
I leaned in, slowly, softly, and touched his arm: just the sleeve at first. Then, with trembling fingers, the back of his neck. He looked up.
“What are we doing, Alicia?” he said, low, almost broken.
I blinked, throat dry. “What do you mean?”
He swallowed. Hard. His fingers finally touched my jaw, featherlight. Tracing the curve down to the pulse in my throat, just above my upper scar.
“This,” he said roughly. “You. Everything.”
And then he kissed me. It wasn’t gentle: it was hungry and devouring.
His hands slid up my sides, under the hem of my shirt, just enough to feel skin, mapping the curve of my waist. My lips opened beneath his without hesitation—like they’d been waiting for this all along.
His mouth moved like he was searching for something, finding it, and still hungry.
His tongue swept mine, and I gasped, heat pooling low in my belly.
He knew exactly what he was doing: he gave me a sense of invincibility, boldness, and femininity.
He pulled me closer, and I climbed onto his lap. His palms flattened against my back, one hand drifting up my spine, the other resting lightly on the scar beneath my ribs, and I didn’t flinch.
I kissed him harder, fingers digging into his hair, pulling him closer, closer, until there was no space left between us. Nothing but heat and hunger and the wild, soaring feeling of being wanted. I hadn’t felt like that for I couldn’t remember how long.
He was warm and solid, smelling of skin and pine and something darker… like storm clouds. His fingers tangled in my hair as if he couldn’t bear the space between us. Hungrier than the second or minute before. We kissed for what felt like hours until we finally pulled back, breathless.
He touched my scar, the one beneath my collarbone.
“You’re beautiful,” he said. Not in that way people say to be nice, but like the realization shocked him. I kissed him again. We stayed like that—a tangle of hands and heat—until the square around us started to thin out, laughter faded, and lights dimmed. He rested his forehead against mine.
“I don’t want this night to end.”
“Then don’t let it,” he exhaled into my ear, the good one. “I have a hotel room,” he said, hand drifting lightly down the curve of my spine. “A ten-minute walk from here. Join me?”
The question hung there for a second too long.
“I need to pack,” I whispered, already mourning the break in our spell. “I’m driving early tomorrow.”
“Are you sure?” he asked, voice low, eyes almost as dark as mine.
I nodded, not certain at all if that made any sense. “I’ll call myself an Uber now.”
“I’ll wait with you.”
We walked hand-in-hand to the edge of the plaza, where the cars lined up like sleeping horses. When mine pulled up, I turned to him. His eyes burned as he kissed me again, with everything he hadn’t said. His thumb brushed my cheek, and my heart beat so loud I was sure he could hear it.
He opened the door for me. “Safe trip, girl.”
“See you on the other side, boy.”