Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
Iwould never, ever forget the pure, lovely shock of standing on an open field for the first time in my life, of breathing clean air, and of seeing the fullness of the sky stretching out and out with nothing to stop it, nothing to cut it into fragments of blue.
Or the way the reeds swayed and rustled in the wind.
Shush, they were saying. Shush. Be quiet.
Be still. Listen. You have nothing to worry about, nothing to rush to.
Time is infinite so long as you let yourself exist in a single moment.
Or the limitless clear air, filled with the song of creatures unseen.
Or the way the field gave into sand, fine and ivory grains getting swallowed by the arms of the sea.
For this moment, I thought, and for all the moments that feel like this, no matter how rare or brief, life is worth living.
With eyes wide open I ran, sheer force of will and a rich fragrance of salt carrying my body. Wind blew back my hair. Tall stems lashed at my legs. Soft earth sank where I stepped, the sea drifting closer and closer to me until the foam spray dampened my cheeks, my clothes, my shoes.
The feeling in my chest was like dying or being born. It didn’t matter which. Both were meant to be forgotten anyway.
“Kai!” I cried out, loud and tearful.
He was right beside me, breathing hard from our running. With a hearty exhale, he threw our bags on the sand behind us so they wouldn’t get wet, then faced the immeasurably deep blue horizon with me.
“I feel like screaming,” I told him.
“Then scream,” he said.
My shoulders shook with scarcely contained energy as I cupped my fever-warm cheeks. “Won’t I look ridiculous?”
“I don’t know. Do I look ridiculous?” he asked and, without further warning, proceeded to scream at the ocean, the veins in his neck standing out, thick and pulsing.
Charmed by the easy way he did all things, even screaming, I clenched my fists at my sides and joined him.
And I did feel ridiculous and theatrical at first, but after a moment something broke in my chest, an unconscious resistance.
My throat cleared, and the sound became guttural, rolling out and back to me like the tide at our feet.
Kai’s screaming bled into laughter, and he grabbed me around the waist with one arm and twirled me around in the air until I was laughing too—laughing so hard that my eyes filled with tears and my lungs strained with joy.
I hadn’t known myself capable of holding such happiness.
Life moved through me like the air did through these reeds.
“Stop!” I half-panted, half-giggled. “Stop! You’re making me dizzy!”
With a careful, controlled movement Kai put me down at my feet, a breathless smile on his face. “Do you feel ridiculous yet?”
“I feel young,” I gasped out. “I feel so young.”
“I feel like that too,” he said, chest still heaving as he gazed far out in wonder. “It’s funny how places you’ve been to a thousand times before can look so different when you’re seeing them through someone else’s eyes.”
“How does it look to you now?” I asked, tracing with my eyes the beauty of his sunlit profile, his mouth, his jaw, the masculine column of his throat.
He turned, and our gazes locked once more. “Mystical. Remote. Beautiful beyond words.”
All the fear and uncertainty of the past few days dissolved in our mutual appreciation of this moment. Relieved at last, I filled my lungs with breath and faced the mystical, remote, beautiful blue sea, the whole scene enriched by its resplendent relation to him.
Yes, I decided.
A life worth living.
◆◆◆
Kai’s holiday cottage was a tiny, sun-bleached structure, with a shingle roof, a blue wooden door, and square windows overlooking the beach. The window boxes were bare of flowers, and the cobbled path leading up to the doorstep was age-scrubbed and crunchy with grains of sand.
Inside, it was dollhouse-pretty, dressed in old furniture and white wallpaper with elegant blue flowers.
The windows were hung with sheer, lacy curtains, lush, yellow sunlight filtering through them, and the couch and two armchairs circling the low coffee table were decorated with mismatched pillows in shades of powder blue and cream.
The built-in shelves on the walls were laden with books, age-faded spines emerging between porcelain knickknacks, crystal vases, and silver candleholders.
There were candles everywhere, most of them half-burned, and picture frames too, some hanging on the walls, others arranged neatly atop the mantle of the fireplace.
Curious, I picked one up, featuring a father, a mother, and a boy, a very young Kai with his hair cut close to his head. His father was tall, strong-looking, and blonde, to my surprise, and his mother was beautiful and lovely-eyed, like he was.
Mother. A sinking stone of a word.
Slowly, gingerly, I passed my fingers over the cold, dust-kissed glass of the frame as if hoping to touch her, as if touch were the magical vessel through which this memory would unravel for me: loud laughter, setting the timer for the camera, everyone getting close, closer, hugging and smiling.
A family. I could not even imagine how it would feel to be a part of such an assortment.
To belong to someone so completely as to be claimed as theirs.
Anya? Oh, yeah, she’s my daughter. What did it mean to be someone’s daughter?
What pleasures and responsibilities came with this title?
People in books and movies so often defined themselves by who their parents were and who they were to them.
So perhaps it was a good thing that I had only myself to be defined by.
My mistakes. My choices. Perhaps my unique aloneness was a gift the Center had given me, a wellness far superior to the mundane ties of family.
Perhaps.
“I know it’s not much,” said Kai, gazing around as though he too was seeing the house for the first time.
“No, Kai. It’s lovely,” I reassured him, returning the picture to the mantelpiece where it belonged.
Nodding, smiling, he trailed past the kitchen, a warm, cozy corner of the house with a small window above the sink overlooking the golden field, and striding further down the creaky hallway, he pushed one of the doors open.
“Bathroom,” he explained cheerfully, switching on the light before moving on to the next door. “And this will be your room.”
Neither of us stepped inside. My gaze darted between him and the half-open door. “Is there another room?”
He made a noncommittal gesture with his hands, his face heating. “Oh, I’ll take the couch. I used to sleep there all the time when I was a kid, so don’t worry about it.”
The hallway, narrow as it was, narrowed still, the walls closing in on us as if to magnify Kai’s imposing physical presence.
Feeling heavy-limbed and oversensitive all of a sudden, I slid past him and stepped inside the room.
It was as big as the living room with a curtain-framed window, a chestnut wardrobe, precious like an heirloom, a quaint vanity table with a tray of old perfume bottles atop it, and a double bed, unmade, the stripped mattress glowing pure white in the morning light, the newest thing in the house, I would guess.
“There are pillows and bedding in the wardrobe,” Kai assured me. “They’re all clean, but we should probably give them another wash just to refresh them.”
“It’s a big bed,” I pointed out with a coy little smile. “Almost like it was made to fit two people.”
“Right,” he chuckled, rubbing a hand over his nape. “But this is not why I invited you here.”
I cocked a brow, playful despite the heat simmering in my bones. “You know, Kai, believe it or not, I can keep my hands to myself.”
Amused now, he crossed his arms before his chest and leaned against the doorframe, which was just wide enough to contain him. The sheer size of him, I thought. His broad shoulders and big hands and this house in which we are alone and on this bed, which is unmade and new. Like me.
“You sure about that, Anya?” he joked, all in good nature, but I could tell he was thinking the same thing. The room. The bed. Our perfect, absolute aloneness.
“Tell you what,” I hummed in something like a challenge, “if the temptation becomes too much for me, I will do the gentlemanly thing and move to the couch.”
He smiled the way he did, grandly, twin dimples bracketing his mouth. “Deal.”
For a moment longer we stared at each other, slowly realizing the terms and conditions of our stay here.
How flimsy they were, how easily surpassable.
Our silent understanding, which at one point had seemed solid and sensible because, yes, I was in a very vulnerable position, and yes, he was not the kind of man who would take advantage of a woman distressed, confused, and quite limited in her remembered experiences, was suddenly rendered moot.
These were all fine enough arguments in terms of logic, but there was not much space for logic in desire.
And this thing between us hardly felt like attraction anymore.
It was something forged in time now. Not an urge but a longing.
Feeling hot, liquid, I cleared my throat and pointed at yet another picture, the ornate brass frame sitting prettily on the nightstand. “Your mom is very beautiful. You take after her.”
Kai nodded gratefully, and after another nervous, pulsing moment, he asked, “Hey, are you sure you’re alright? You seem a bit preoccupied.”
“I’m just thinking.”
“About?”
“Oh, so many things,” I exhaled. “Parents, I suppose. My parents. Who are they? Where are they? I mean, obviously, they’re dead. Otherwise, they would have contacted me by now, right?”
He took a few steps in my direction, the space between us narrowing. “Do you think grief is what made you go through with the procedure?”