He was doing this to prove her wrong. To tell her that lifecouldbe like a movie, if she wanted it to be. It was obvious he was. It had been obvious the day before, though that message hadn’t seemed so direct to her. That one could have just meantdon’t worry, don’t do anything stupid, I’ll come back to you—which was lovely, but maybe just meant as a fun way to tell her something.
This on the other hand...this was different.
This was someone declaringlove.
Every message from then on was someone declaring love, in one way or another. He sent her Johanna reading Beethoven’s letter at the window. Kyle Reese telling Sarah Connor that he’d come across time for her. There was Driver kissing Irene, and James asking “if there was a place not in silence and not in sound” and the Dread Pirate Roberts saying “As you wish.” Some meant more than simple love and some meant less—she heard “don’t let this chance pass” in the scene fromImmortal Belovedand “however you need it to be” inThe Princess Bride—but all of them amounted to the same thing.
And even if they hadn’t, even if by some miracle she hadn’t begun to believe that she’d been wrong, so wrong...there was the last one. The last one was not a clip from a movie at all—though that wasn’t a disappointment. How could it possibly be? It was what she’d been waiting for, hoping for, without even knowing it.
Here was reality finally being what all of those films promised.
These are my words, he wrote,not as beautiful as Beethoven’s or as incredible as coming across time for someone. But know that I would, if I had the chance. I would be the survivor of a harrowing future war, just so I could come for you and have you understand beyond any doubt that I love you. I want the movie to be real too, because if it was I know you wouldn’t be afraid of what won’t happen next. Don’t be afraid, my love. Don’t think the ending has to be you sitting on the floor, alone in your grief. I’m with you.
If you want me to be I’ll always be with you.
Bernie
She closed the letter then, though not because she’d finished reading. She could have gone over those words a million times and still have been no closer to a stopping point. The urge to look again was already so great she could hardly stand it—but she had to. There was someone at her door, and she knew who it was. She didn’t suspect or hope or maybe dream that one day it could be.
She knew.
It was him.
He had come to her door like the long-lost hero of every romance story ever, and now she was going to do what every romance heroine did in return. He deserved it, more than anything he deserved it. If he could give her this then she could run to him, without reservations. She didn’t stop to think that it could be the postman. She didn’t wonder how she might ever be able to offer him more.
She would find a way.
And she would start by flinging open the door, and hurling herself into his arms.
Chapter Ten
She didn’t need to think about it. Once his arms were around her and his mouth was on hers it just seemed easy—or at least, far easier than it had before. There were no extra questions or brutal doubts. She simply started shedding her clothes at the door, one gloriously relief-filled piece at a time. First her jersey, then her t-shirt, then her socks, sure each time that this would be the item that did her in.
Here she would stop. This would be the thing that took it too far. She was getting too naked; she was exposing too much. She’d never reach her jeans. Removing her jeans meant he would see her legs, and she couldn’t have that. Her legs were the worst. They were like the roots of some old tree, gnarled and knotted and rough.
She couldn’t possibly.
Yet somehow she did. She wriggled them down her legs as she led him toward the stairs, full of the oddest sort of relief she’d ever felt in her life. She didn’t even know how to identify it properly. All she could think of was a snake shedding its skin—as though she’d been carrying around extra all this time and just hadn’t known it.
She knew it now.
She knew that she hadn’t just hidden all of this from him. She’d been hiding it from herself too. Her head flooded with memories, all suddenly seen from a different angle—like the time she’d turned around the full-length mirror in that hotel room the airline had gotten for her, just so she didn’t have to see her own ravaged body. Or at the hospital, when she’d closed her eyes as she struggled out of the bath.
She’d thought it was because of the pain, but she understood now.
She hadn’t wanted to glimpse her reflection in the mirror over the sink. Who would have wanted to? Everything had been so red and raw then, so unlike the person she’d been before. But it was different now. It was okay now. She needed to start accepting that it was okay. She liked her scars, most faded to pale pinks and nearly whites. They reminded her of that future war he’d mentioned—as thoughshewere the one who’d survived. She was the one who’d come across time.
He certainly looked at her as if she had.
He looked at her the way she’d always hoped someone would—not as a victim of something terrible, but as a warrior who’d fought her way to him. He looked with love and awe and all those good things, and then just when she was starting to feel he’d stared too long he said the best possible words she could think of.
“Why did you ever think you had to hide from me?” he asked, as though it had always been that simple. She could have told him from day one; she didn’t have to veil it all in half-truths about being inexperienced and wanting to go slow. It was obvious now, and not only because he was saying this thing and looking at her with the same warmth and desire he always seemed to feel.
There were also the words he then added, as simple as a handshake.
“Did you really think I didn’t know?” he asked, and for a second she couldn’t decide what to feel. On the one hand there was this huge swell of heartbreaking relief, to know he didn’t care and probably wouldn’t ask now. If he already knew, he wouldn’t ask about it. And then on the other, there was a twinge of the most delicious embarrassment she’d ever felt in her life.
Of course he had guessed.
