“Well, maybe I don’t want to be a mystery anymore.”
He looked nervous as he said this, but only for a moment, then he was back to his jaunty old self. I wondered how it was possible for everything to change between us in just a few days. All of a sudden, the villain wasn’t such a villain, and the princess had to admit she wasn’t such a princess, either, and she’d come down from the tower where she was imprisoned, and she wanted to live. It had taken her a long time. She’d had to realize she’d always had the key, but that a part of her hadn’t wanted to leave because she felt safe behind bars. That she’d gotten used to the ambiguity, the chaos in her mind, even as it was slowly poisoning her heart.
But now she was strong, and she was ready for a plot twist in this story that had been sad since the beginning. She was tired of thinking so much, tired of turning over the same things, looking at them from different angles and perspectives and trying to find an answer. Enough examining the possibilities only to push them aside and forget about them. She wanted to live them. She wanted to be open to everything.
She no longer hated her memories or her desires. But she did hate how scared the wordusmade her. And the longing that shook her when he wasn’t there. The need for him. And not knowing if they both felt it, or only her.
He dropped a pair of socks, and I leaned over to pick them up.
“Fine. Let’s get to know each other. Even if I doubt there will be many surprises after everything we’ve told each other,” I said, holding out the socks to him.
He smiled in reply, but there was something in his eyes I didn’t know how to read. He grabbed my wrist and pulled me close. That pressure made me shiver. He had that mischievous expression again that put me on tenterhooks. My poor heart was tired of pumping so much adrenaline.
“There’s one condition, though,” he added. “I’ve planned these days out, so I need you to trust me and go with the flow.”
I remembered how Trey had ground my heart into dust years ago. Now he was holding that dust in his hands and molding it, shaping it like clay, trying to give it back its original form.
As if it were that simple.
But maybe it was? Because it seemed to be working, and in a strange way, that made me feel vulnerable, because if he could put me back together, that meant he could break me again. I knew it was stupid to think of things that way, that it didn’t make sense because we weren’t the people we’d been in the past. We had changed, and this time…
This time was different. Real. Something was happening between us. What, though? I was scared to ask.
“You’ve made plans, then?”
“Yes!”
He bent forward, and I closed my eyes as I heard him whisper, “Trust me. Do you think you can?” His voice sounded sweet as molasses.
“Yeah.”
“Are you sure? Because it seems like you’re waffling.”
I grinned and pushed him away slightly. It wasn’t fair, how handsome he was, how irresistible. I needed a break and walked toward the door.
“Harper.” I looked back over my shoulder. With a devilish smirk, he said, “About that kiss last night…”
The heat in my breast, in my neck, in my cheeks made me stop. I had tried to tell myself I’d forget it ever happened. Apparently he hadn’t.
“Kiss? I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
He bit his lower lip. And it took my breath away.
17
Do You Believe in Fate?
It was Isak Dinesen who said, “The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears, or the sea.”
I don’t know why, but I remembered that when I was on the ferry looking at the sea, those words sank into me, and I found myself in them. The sweat on my skin when I woke from nightmares. The tears spilled with countless emotions I couldn’t manage to express. The sea that surrounded me, restoring my calm, healing me as I struggled to bear the pain of that process. Because salt burns and stings, but it also helps the wound scar over.
I sucked in a deep breath of sea air. A few days before, I’d made the same trip in the opposite direction, yet I already felt I was different from that person who had looked at the waters with suspicion and fear. Before I knew where they were taking me.
I was starting to realize that this was what courage was: moving forward, confronting uncertainty, facing whatever lies ahead. What I had thought was my comfort zone was just a comfortable prison I had gotten used to by stifling my urge for freedom.
Now I could feel that freedom. It was still vague, but I could sense it taking shape, growing stronger, within me. There was aweightlessness to me, as though I were floating after the chains that had held me to the ground had broken.
Can a whole life’s inertia just vanish in three days? Before Hayley opened the door to that corner of the world for me, I would have said no. I didn’t believe in love at first sight or sudden revelations that appear out of nowhere like a magic trick. For me, that was the stuff of books, fiction and fairy tales, not something that could ever happen in the real world.
