I wrapped my arms around her waist and brought her close. She leaned her chin on my chest and looked up with a smile. Damn those blue oceans.
“I’m not accepting any gift over twenty-five dollars. That’s the guideline in all the big corporations.” I bent my head and kissed her nose.
“Oh, great, it was exactly that.”
“Okay. What is it?”
She opened her hand and displayed it, palm up, between us. “Something small that arrived just in time. Sometimes I like huge conglomerates. They deliver fast.”
I hated to take my hands off her, but I had to open the small, gray suede pocket she held. “What is this, January?”
She just gestured ago onwith her head.
I opened the case and extracted the round object that hid inside.
A compass.
A small, round, brass compass. “So you can always find your way back home,” the engraving on its back side read.
I looked at her, unable to utter a syllable.
She shrugged. “Wherever you are, you’re with me, here.” She put her palm over her heart. “And I’ll be with you wherever you are. Here.” She put her palm over the left side of my chest. “But I still need you to find your way home to me.”
I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t cry. “Men don’t cry, only losers do,” were words I had heard since I was four. Maybe one day … But right now, all I could do was wrap January in my arms and hold her so tight until she mumbled, “My God, you’re too strong.”
Only because you’re making me strong, I would have said if I could speak.
She was right. In everything. My rage and hate were scattered like my life had been, and I carried them with me everywhere until I had become their address. But my love—though I carried it with me, too—had no home. Now I found its permanent address, in January.
And I would always find my way home to her, wherever she was.
Chapter 31
January
The hardest cages to leave are the ones we put ourselves in, the ones inside us.
Like aging, it was easier for me to see it on someone else rather than myself. I saw it on Oliver, who thought he would never be rid of the rage, who believed that his love wasn’t worth having, and that he wasn’t worth being loved. I was determined to show him the way out of these cages.
I had my own cages to leave—accepting myself with my failures, caring for myself as I did for others, forgiving my mistakes as I forgave others. And Oliver was determined to help me just as much.
“Just don’t get into any new protests while I’m gone,” he said, holding me next to the front door that neither one of us was eager to open.
“It’s been a while.” I chuckled.
“You’re a fighter, January. It’s in you, in whatever you do. You don’t have to carry a sign for me to see it.”
“Are you trying to make me fall for you harder? Because it’s impossible.”
“I’ll try to prove to you that it is.” He smirked. Oliver Madden smirking was something I was getting used to.
“I think it’s already working.” I grinned.
“We’ll call it work in progress?”
“Shake on it,” I said. “We’re all work in progress.”
He took my hand, but instead of shaking it, he entwined his fingers with mine and kissed me until we bumped against the door, our bodies ready to take it all the way, but the Uber driver honked outside. Oliver Madden was using Ubers as if he couldn’t afford a chauffeur.
