“Little fire,” he says gently. “You and I both know that no matter how hard we try to avoid it or try to cut it off it won’t fucking go away. It hasn’t now. It never will. I understand that you’re confused about these feelings and that it’s not something you wanted but it’s here. It’s here, no matter how much you want to fight it off.”
To my dismay, tears sting my eyes because yeah, he is right. The day I’d broken my tether to Ryan was the day my heart strings were finally able to tie to Tyler's.
I felt it that day, as I sat in the airport, despite my internal desperate cry, something echoed along that thread between us whisperingcome homewith a gentle tug to coax my broken heart.
“Something pulled me into the coffee shop that day.Youpulled me there.” He places a scarred hand over his broad chest. “I…I felt it here. Somehow.”
“Me too,” It’s barely a whisper.
“Nothing that has happened has been a coincidence. Not with meeting Sam or having Macey as your patient, or running into me in the coffee shop with Cole and Anthony. Because with me, comes them.”
I convinced myself to believe far bigger lies than trying to talk myself out of the reality of this situation, that seems too magical to exist in our world.
What I feel for him is something that you read about in fiction. And yet, here it is, the most real thing I’ve felt in my life.
“There’s areasonit never worked out with anyone else,” he says. “It’s why when things happened with Ryan and you fled here… Sunny, you were coming tome. I knew in that coffee shopthat we weren’t done. If Boston wasn’t going to bring us back together then I would’ve. And when I saw you that night with Sam, I wasn’t surprised at all. I knew we had unfinished business. That was the night that I knew,I knewI was going to fall in love with you. I didn’t even know your name, but I knew,I knewI’d fucking love you. We weren’t done then, and we aren’t done now.”
“You’re marrying Shelby, Tyler.”
“No I’m not.” He takes a step closer to me. I rip my gaze to his. “I called it off.” Another cautious step towards me.
“How?”
He swallows hard. “Let’s just say I found a way. I found my way out, Sunny. Just like we promised.”
“Why?”
“It’syouSunny. It’ll always be you.”
He found a way out. And I don’t even fucking care what way that was. All I care is that hedid.
“I thought after you broke it off with us that you’d be better off anyways. But then, I…I felt you. I felt you through that indescribable thing between us. And while you were telling me one thing, I’d heard your screams on the other end, racing down that thread.Don’t marry her.”
My eyes widen hearing the exact words that played in my head being spoken off his tongue.
“Sunny, I didn’t see anything before you. I couldn’t see anything in my future before I met you.I didn’t see anything.”
Little Fire. The nickname rings in my head. Because somehow, the sad girl became the light in his life. What once was a dark future all of a sudden had an illumination of possibilities.
“You don’t have to say it, Sunny. You don’t have to say the words because I’ve already felt it. I’ve already felt it as your tongue wrote across mine. The way your fingers trace it over the scars that made me believe it couldn’t exist. The way the moment I met you, something told me that I’ll love you, andyou’ll love me, too. And that’s all there is to it. I love you, Sunny.I love you.”
Breathless, I finally look up at him. In the glow of the string lights that cast an orange hue in my apartment, he looks softer here. The words I’d suppressed far too long spill off my tongue in a desperate attempt for him to understand. No matter how it’s said, though, I know he will.
“Something died inside of me the day I left Ryan. I was a stupid, hopeless romantic girl who clung to the first boy who loved her in hopes that maybe, just maybe he could love me the way I loved him,” I finally say.
He watches me intently, keeping the silence to make space for my words. Something Ryan had never done for me.
“I was a girl who’d do anything to save what we had. Desperate to make all my firsts my lasts. He knew that. And maybe that’s why he did what he did to me.”
He ruined me, so nobody else would want me.
“Contemplation had turned to plan. If I wasn’t alive, he’d have no reason to go after my family. But something told me to…to just hold on. It was a small whisper over my cries, but I listened. And then I got a call from the recruiter.”
He rubs a hand over his mouth. “Yeah,” he whispers.
“And it was you. All of you.” I realize. That voice was a combination of all of theirs as a beacon through my brokenness telling me to just wait. To hold on.Wait for us.
In a time where my own life didn’t seem worth it, somehow the whispers of my future pulled through the devastation of my end.
