Chapter 33
Chapter Thirty-Three
brAM
If I had a pulse, it’d be racing right now.
I was just wallowing in self-pity on Heartbreak Bench – the very best place for wallowing – when something on the other side of the graveyard caught my eye. It isn’t exactly quiet here, and I’ve seen my fair share of tourists and ramblers, but I haven’t paid attention to them. Not really.
Not until I saw that flash of pastel purple at the top of the 199 steps.
I knew before I turned my head that it was her.
Ok, maybe at first I thought I might have reached a level of lovesick where I was straight up hallucinating Lucy in random places, but the moment that our eyes met over the graves it hit me like a meteor.
She’s here.
I jump up from the bench, and there’s a moment when I’m so overwhelmed by emotion that I fully don’t know what to do with myself.
I start to walk, though I don’t know where.
There’s a big part of me that wants to run to her, to meet her in the grass and swing her around in slow motion like we’re in a cheesy film, but I’m obviously far too cool to do that.
Not to mention that I need to find out why she’s here. I can’t let myself hope until then.
She rushes over to me and stops a few feet away, cheeks flushed and blonde curls ravaged by the wind.
‘Hi,’ she says, though the sound is immediately snatched away by a gust.
‘Hi,’ I reply. I still can’t gauge the tone of this visit, but she’s here.
She motions to the bench behind me. ‘Can we sit?’
I nod, and we walk the few steps back to the bench and sit down. It’s a little more sheltered here because of the church wall behind us, but the sea breeze is still pretty brisk. I fight the urge to gather Lucy up in my arms and pull her towards me.
‘I have some things to say, and I need you to listen,’ she starts, reaching to swipe a rogue curl out of one eye. ‘I practised this little speech in my head the whole way here, so please just don’t say anything until I’m finished, ok?’
My chest feels so full I can barely speak, but I manage to croak out an ‘ok’, and she nods quickly, nervously.
‘So I know that the last time we spoke, you told me to leave.’
I wince. I mean, she’s not wrong, but it stings to hear it like that, from her point of view.
‘And I did leave,’ she continues. ‘You wanted me to go back to my life and try to find what I was looking for. But when I went back to my life, it felt … different. And it took me a little while to realise that it was because I was different.’
She smiles, and it’s a tiny movement – quiet and tentative. ‘I’ve spent my entire life trying to make other people happy, often at my own expense, and I’m not doing it anymore. I need to do what feels right to me.’
Her smile broadens, chest puffing out with pride, and her voice when she speaks is a little bolder. ‘If you told me to go because you don’t want me here, I’ll leave. But if it was because you were trying to do what you think is best for me, then no. I’ll decide that.’
Pride simmers somewhere in my chest. Of course I was trying to do what I thought was best, but most of all I couldn’t bear the idea of her settling for me.
I feel like I deserve this version of Lucy the least, but she’s right.
I definitely want her here. It was stupid of me to pretend that I didn’t.
She reaches for my hand, warm fingers closing around mine.
‘I told you that I want a family, and that was the truth, but I don’t think there’s any set way to have that.
I mean, you can start out with these grand ideas of how your family is going to be, but life doesn’t usually go to plan.
People die, they abandon you with your grandparents, they beg their undead celebrity friends to turn them.
’ She shoots me a knowing look after the last comment, and it makes a surprised laugh burst out of me.
‘Peggy said it best,’ she says, her lips curving into a smile. ‘She said that sometimes your closest bond is with people who aren’t really family at all – that it means more if they’re here because they choose to be.’
That hits me right in the chest. She’s right, of course. I mean, when I think of all the people in my life that I consider family, I’m mostly not related to them – or I’m only possibly related to them – and that’s never bothered me before. I don’t know why I thought it would be different for her.
She’s here because she’s choosing to be, and it means everything.
‘At the end of the day,’ she says, those clear blue eyes holding mine like a promise, ‘all any of us are looking for is somewhere to belong, and I found that here. With you.’
I gather her up into my arms without a moment’s hesitation, muttering softly into her hair, into that crease at the base of her neck. It’s only been days, but it feels like years since I’ve held her like this, and I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to let her go.
I note the moment she melts into me, cataloguing it in my brain so I can replay it over and over.
‘I don’t need you to promise me forever, just because you’ve got it,’ she mutters, close to my ear. ‘All I want is right now. We can work on the rest.’
I don’t know much, but I know one thing: right now is not nearly enough. I back up a bit so that I can study her. I want to take my time with this – to commit every detail of her to memory.
My fingers skate across the skin of her cheek, soft and cool from the breeze. ‘I loved your speech.’
She beams in response. ‘Thank you.’
‘It wasn’t necessary, though,’ I say, reaching my free hand to flip my hair out of my face. ‘You already had me.’ I chuckle with the truth of it. ‘You’ve had me the whole time. You could have just marched over here and told me to stop being an idiot and kiss you, and I would have been all in.’
Her smile twists a little to the side, teeth nipping at her lower lip. ‘Really?’
‘Yeah.’
Honestly, I was all in the very second I realised she’d come back for me. That she’d chosen me.
I feel her laugh as a warm breath against me. ‘Bram?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Stop being an idiot and kiss me.’
She does not need to ask me twice.
I use the hand on her cheek as leverage as I pull her face to mine. I kiss her softly at first, slow strokes of my lips against hers, which feel like an apology and a vow all at once, before they gradually become needier – maybe a little frantic.
It’s probably deeply inappropriate to kiss like this in a graveyard, but I don’t let that hold me back. Because I’ve never felt more alive than I do with Lucy’s tongue in my mouth, her hands tugging at my jacket, my heart in her hands.
Not to mention that it’s goth as fuck.
May the people around us rest in peace.
‘I hoped you’d come back,’ I mutter, between kisses, pulling away a little to nod at the church behind us. ‘I’d have prayed for it, but I didn’t want to burst into flames.’
Her brows tug together. ‘Can that happen?’
‘I’d prefer not to find out,’ I say, with a shrug, and I feel her smile against my lips, the sweet warmth of her breath on my face as she chuckles.
‘That’s fair.’
And then she kisses me again, barely a whisper of a thing, and the sincerity in it makes my heart kick out a few beats – almost a rhythm – before it fades. It shouldn’t make sense, this thing between us, but somehow, when I’m with her, nothing feels more right.
‘Lucy?’ I murmur in her ear before catching her earlobe between my teeth.
She shivers. ‘Mhmm?’
‘When I said you should want someone who’d die for you, do you think it counts if they’re already dead?’
‘I’ll allow it,’ she quips, giddy and breathless, and there’s a rasp in her voice that sends goosebumps scattering across my skin, like that first note played on a guitar to a packed crowd. It’s the sound of promise – of possibility. Because no matter what the future holds, she’s here now.
And I know one thing for sure.
This is going to be one hell of a song.