Heat Wave(115)

“I’ve come back for you,” he says, and I’m struck. By the strength in his voice, in the boldness of his statement. Struck by what this means. None of it makes any sense. To see him here in Chicago again feels like he’s been sucked into the wrong timeline. He should be strolling on the beach with a surfboard under his arm, driving around Hanalei with the top of his Jeep down, wind in his hair, coconut palms reflected in sunglasses.

“Do you want to invite him inside or what?” Claire says from behind me, her eyes shining as she looks between the two of us. “I’m going to bed. Just…if you don’t invite him in and sort your piles of shit out, you’re going to have one angry roommate on your hands come the morning.”

Then she turns and heads over to her room, closing the door behind her.

“Can I come in?” he asks quietly.

I nod, not finding the words, and head back inside.

It’s even stranger to have him in my place. It was small before, it’s smaller now, his large frame taking up all the space. But that’s nothing new. He’s always been larger than life, not just in muscle and height, but in energy. I can feel him burning like the sun, drawn to him like the moon. He’s a force of nature.

I can’t sit down. I can’t do anything but stand in the middle of the room and fidget, my arms at my sides, fists opening and closing.

I can’t take my eyes off of him. I’m afraid if I do, he’ll disappear, back into my dream.

Because I have to be dreaming, right?

“Freckles…,” he says.

And it doesn’t matter what else comes out of his mouth. My nickname. I haven’t heard it in so long. It brings me back, hard and fast, to the life that was, the life where I was really me, the life I thrived in. Just hearing that, having Logan in my apartment, makes me realize that I was doing a piss-poor job of pretending to be happy, trying to move on. Who I am with him is who I am. Who I am in Kauai is who I am. I’ll never be able to pretend otherwise.

The pressure builds behind my eyes, warmth in my nose. Before I can stop it, the tears are spilling over and I’m gasping for breath.

And unlike every time I’ve cried over the last six months, wishing he was here to take it all away, he is here.

He comes right to me and envelopes me in his arm, holding me tight, my head pressed against his chest. He smells like love. He feels like a soul. He holds me tighter, even though I can barely breathe through my sobs, because he knows it makes me feel safe, that he’ll never let me go.

“It’s okay,” he whispers, running his palm over my hair, kissing the top of my head. “It’s okay. We’re going to fix this.”

I cry for a long time like this, letting everything out and he takes it in. He doesn’t say anything other than that he’s here and we’ll fix this and he’s not going anywhere. His words only make me break down more, the beauty in them, their truth.

But eventually I have to ask, I have to know.

I pull back and stare at him through raw eyes. “How can you still want me? How can you not hate me?”

The corner of his mouth quirks up into a smile, even though it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Because I never believed a word you’d said.”

“The note…”

“The note meant nothing. Giving the ring back meant nothing. I knew those weren’t actions. I know you Veronica, and I know your heart. I know what you’re about and none of that was true. You’re not that good of a liar and I can always see your truth. That’s why I came after you, to the airport. I wasn’t about to let you fly away.”

“But you did,” I say quietly.

“I did,” he says, nodding. He sighs. “I had to. Not just the security, though fuck them. Because I saw in your eyes what I needed to see. It wasn’t confirmation of the note. It was confirmation that you still loved me. That this was tearing you apart like it was tearing me. And that I had to trust you.”

“That’s it? You just…trusted me?”

“I’ve always trusted you. I knew that whatever you were doing, there was a reason for it. That you still loved me and you wouldn’t do something that drastic, that crazy, unless you had to. Unless it was against your will.”

“It was my parents.”

“I know. I knew it before Charlie told me.”

“Charlie told you?” I exclaim. Again, something he never mentioned when I was emailing him.

“Right away,” he says. “He was the one who told me you’d left. It was only later that I noticed you’d broken his nose. He confessed pretty quickly. If it weren’t for you, I would have done some damage to him myself. But you know Charlie didn’t really know what he was doing. And he’s not really the point of any of this. But I knew.”