Chapter 25 #3
“Uh, sure” he stammered, “baby what’s wrong?”
Her eyes darted back straight ahead. She wouldn’t allow herself to look at Juniper again. Not ever if she could help it. Rowan thought she was a fuck up, a coward, and Juniper deserved so much better than that.
“It’s nothing. I just don’t want to be here anymore.”
She didn’t want to be there in many ways.
She didn’t want to be around the weight of a culture she felt expected things from her she couldn’t give.
A home that she was taught she was from, made from, in the ways Indigenous people feel connection to place, to land.
It didn’t feel like a home at all. Instead it felt like a cage from which she was supposed to perform.
She didn’t want to be around anyone. She didn’t want to even be in her own body.
Later that evening, Victor found her sitting on the bathroom floor crying. The scissors she used to cut all of her hair off were in her lap. All of her hair was in the trash can.
He sat down on the floor with her and pulled her head against his chest. He rocked her back and forth as she sobbed against his heart.
Juniper looked like she was in a state of shock at Rowan’s retelling of the memory. “You never told me any of that. I could have helped you. I would have loved you through that.”
“It’s easy to see that now. It was impossible to know that then.
You know, I was always in such awe of you.
I watched you walk around the world with such confidence that no one would expect someone who went through what you did to have.
You always made me feel so brave, like I could accomplish anything. ”
“Then why didn’t you think I could help you feel that way through this too?”
“Honestly, I felt like if I couldn’t be as brave as you, I was weak. I didn’t deserve a happy life, or you.”
“Oh, Rowan, I feel like my heart is breaking all over that you suffered that way in solitude.”
“I don’t want you to feel any more upset about that period of our lives than you already have.
I was young… and scared. Finding myself wasn’t something you could give me, or that I could get here.
I regret how I left and that it made you feel the way you did.
But I don’t regret giving myself the space and opportunity to find myself.
I wouldn’t be me if I hadn’t done that. So that’s why I left.
When I applied for that job weeks ago, it was out of desperation to not come back and fuck your life up more. ”
Rowan quickly wiped a tear descending Juniper’s cheek.
“I’m sure this all sounds so stupid. What, I didn’t like myself so that’s why I broke your heart? You didn’t deserve that.”
“It doesn’t sound stupid, Rowan. You’re right, I didn’t deserve that. But you also didn’t deserve to be made to feel the way you did. I was too caught up in myself to notice how badly you were hurting.”
“I was not okay, Juniper. I was in a really bad place.”
“I knew the pressure to conform to cultural expectations weighed on you, but I didn’t realize they were crushing you. I’m so sorry I didn’t figure that out, and I wasn’t there for you.”
“I didn’t let you in enough to even know, Juniper.”
“Then maybe we tell our story this way. We were just young kids who had had difficult lives, who found each other when they needed someone the most, who fell in love. And who each needed to do what they did to survive. And now, I hope, we understand the inevitableness of being together. That our lives finally converged at the right point, under the right conditions, with nothing but open space in front of us.”
“That’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard. I don’t deserve you, Juniper.”
“Yes, you do.” Juniper laid her head against Rowan’s shoulder. “I’ve always been in love with you. Even when I hated you.”
“I know. I hated myself for it too. So much I lost myself in it for a long time. But I promise you, I am not going anywhere. I will spend every day showing you how deeply you’re loved.
All of the ways you deserve to be loved.
” She slid a hand against her cheek and raised her face up. “If you’ll let me.”
Juniper pressed a kiss into her lips. “I want to be yours. I’ve always wanted to be yours.”
Rowan stroked a thumb down her cheek. “You are. And I’m yours. There’s no world, no moment in time that exists without you in it. Nothing will change that for me, ever.”
Rowan drew her in and held her until the inevitableness Juniper felt about them seeped into every pore of her body.
She kissed the lines of salt that had dried on her cheeks.
Then she froze. She pulled back slowly and drew her finger against her mouth to motion a shh.
She then used that finger to point across Juniper’s shoulder.
Juniper turned slowly just as she saw a white piebald deer lift its head from where it had been grazing.
It stared at them both for a few moments before it jerked its head to the side and darted off into the cover of the tree line behind Juniper’s house.
“Do you remember what the white deer signifies?” Juniper asked quietly.
“Remind me,” Rowan prompted.
“A time of important transition or change. The deer was a guide for those who encountered it to remind them of their need to honor and connect with the natural world and to themselves.”
Rowan drew her in even closer. Who was she to discredit a sign like that?