‘You aren’t the person you were back then either. You were wishing for something exciting to happen in your life and Tate suddenly appeared and you ran with it. You aren’t like that now.’
‘What if I still want adventure and excitement?’
Emma gave a small smile. ‘I don’t think you’d be lacking in excitement being around Dean every day. I’ve seen how you light up when he walks in the room, and I know I’ve never seen that man happier in the whole time I’ve known him. Sometimes, the excitement and adventure are found in the little everyday things. You just have to know where to look for them.’
Bel thought over Emma’s words as she left the party early, saying her goodbyes and slipping out without speaking to Dean. Yes, she felt like a coward, but she’d barely slept and she was definitely not in possession of the kind of emotional fortitude she’d be needing when she spoke to him again.
Bel had been cleaning since coming back from the welcome-home party and it was now dark. The beauty of having rented the house out furnished was that nothing had needed to be stored, other than her personal items, which she’d kept in the shed. After a bit of a clean, everything felt like home again. Only … not quite. Even home, despite looking the same, didn’t feel quite the same. Like it too had somehow moved on and changed in some infinitesimal way.
She put down the last box she’d carried in from the shed and opened it to find the remaining bits and pieces from her bedroom. After a brief hesitation, she removed the pink and gold hardcover journal that sat on top. She ran her fingers across the beautifully embossed cover and felt a strange tingle moving through her fingers. Opening the book, she found the torn-out page and let out a fatalistic sigh at the title: ‘My Soulmate List’.
It had been nearly two years since she’d sat down to write her list, pouring her heart into that one desperate wish to find her soulmate. What a disaster that had turned out to be.
Against her better judgement, she allowed her gaze to skim over the handwritten list, bracing for the disappointment to emerge. At first glance, the requests she’d made seemed simple enough … even if she’d had the fictional character of Jax Lexington in mind when she’d written them out. Only she hadn’t gotten Jax; instead, she’d gotten Tate. After allowing a brief interlude of self-pity, though, Bel felt an unexpected calmness settle around her.
Her eyes narrowed slightly as she sat in thoughtful reflection, and she reviewed the list once more, a lot more slowly this time. Her heart began being in a weird, out-of-kilter rhythm.
Brave.Tate hadn’t done anything that could be called bravery. Jax could parachute from a plane and rescue a socialite heiress from a kidnapper in South America. Pretty extreme. And yet, there was Dean, snake handling and willingly putting himself in danger—being part of the RFS and SES to help others in need?Thatwas brave.
Chiselled jaw.It had been one of the first things she’d noticed about Tate, but an image of Dean’s strong jawline, emphasised by the sexy stubble he now preferred, flashed through her mind.
Intelligent. Tate had obviously come from a good school and he had a degree in management. Listening to him explain his job, though, had bored her silly within minutes, while listening to Dean talk about farming and how technical the whole thing was nowadays had really impressed her.
Someone who understands me. Tate didn’t have a clue about what made her tick, not even with all the time they’d spent together. Not once had he ever asked what was important to her, what she was passionate about. But she and Dean had talked about their dreams for hours. She knew that he wanted to expand his crops within the next few seasons and was excited to experiment with regen farming. He knew about her love of reading and how important books had alwaysbeen to her, and how much she valued her newfound independence with her business.
Loves excitement…hero qualities. Tatehadplayed the chivalrous hero at the cocktail party, saving her from an embarrassing wardrobe malfunction, but when it came to real hero qualities, there hadn’t been many of those. Dean, on the other hand, was a man who was out on the front line when his community needed him. The guy had committed break and enter to return a rooster to the museum … forher.It didn’t get much more exciting than that. He really had been not onlyherhero but a hero to the kids as well, building the chook pen of their dreams, stepping in to be the father figure they’d needed while their own had been fighting to regain his life. Not to mention helping her bake biscuits …
Handsome. Tate had certainly been that, in a skin-deep way. Dean, meanwhile, may never be on the cover of a romance novel, but her heart fluttered every time she saw him. He was compassionate and caring. He would do anything for his friends and loved ones and that made him even more attractive.
Beautiful eyes. She had a memory of Dean’s green-grey eyes as they stared down into hers, caught by the glimmer of moonlight as it shone through the bedroom window …
The book fell from her fingers.How could I have been so blind?
She’d beensosure back then that it had been Tate. Tall, handsome, charismatic Tate, who had come along and swepther off her feet. She’d been so fixated on finding her very own Jax Lexington that she’d allowed herself to see only the parts of Tate that appeared to be like Jax. And if they hadn’t been there, she’d somehow either ignored them orforcedhim to fit into this image of the man she’d thought she wanted.
And this entire time, he’d been right here under her nose. She’d been a complete idiot.
Itwasn’tTate. It hadneverbeen Tate. Shehadmanifested the man of her dreams—and he’d come back to town after years of being away.
She’d manifested Dean.
No drive had ever invoked this quantity of nervous butterflies in Bel’s stomach. Her mind had been rehearsing a million different ways to explain the chaos that had been unfolding within her ever since she’d made the connection a mere two hours earlier.
It had suddenly become clearwhyTate hadn’t worked out. Rushing into things with him had been the dumbest thing she’d ever done, yet maybe that had been part of the universe’s grand plan too; some vital lesson in life she’d apparently needed to learn.
The lack of trust she had in her own judgement because of her previous decisions suddenly cleared up. Shecouldtrust her heart. Falling for Tate had never been about her heart—it was simply a hard experience she had to undergo in orderto recognise whatreallove was supposed to feel like when it eventually showed up.It was supposed to feel like Dean.
She’d paced her bedroom floor anxiously before coming to the only logical decision: she needed to tell him she’d been foolishly focused on all the wrong things.
Now, she sat in the car in his driveway, gathering her courage. The outside floodlight came on as she walked towards the house, then the front door opened and Dean appeared in the doorway.
‘Bel?’ His surprise proved he’d obviously been expectinganyonebut her. ‘What’s happened? Are you okay?’
She almost smiled at his immediate concern, only she feared she might vomit due to the sudden nausea she was feeling as her nerves rolled about in the pit of her stomach. ‘I’m fine. I should have called,’ she started, then wonderedwhythe hell shehadn’tsimply called him.Too late to go back now.‘I was unpacking at Gran’s.’ She stopped once more.Don’t tell him about all the woo-woo stuff.‘I made this list,’ she blurted, and immediately groaned inwardly.
‘A list?’ he echoed, obviously still trying to work out if she reallywasokay.
‘That’s not really important right now,’ she said quickly. ‘The thing is … I thought I knew what Iwanted.And, it turned out, I had no idea what I actuallyneed.’
