That’s when the tears come. My bottom lip quivers and I have to look away as my eyes burn with the stinging wetness. He’s not a ghost, and I know it by the way my emotions ping back and forth and rage all over the place with an effect only he can have.
“Don’t cry,” he says softly.
“What are you really doing here?” I huff. “Why are you in California?”
“I don’t expect anything from you,” he assures me, but the fear in his eyes gives him away. “But it’s like I said all along…I’ll do whatever it takes to prove to you that I can be the man you deserve. I’ll be here, waiting, hoping that you’ll find it in your heart to trust me. Again.”
I’m overwhelmed and think of running away. I was finally free from him and then all I wanted was to have him back. To be pulled back into his current. Now he’s standing here out of the blue, saying everything I never thought I’d never hear again. He’s waiting for me. The pressure of it is terrifying and beautiful all at once.
“I’m sorry I didn’t know you were telling the truth,” I tell him, still doing my best to fight back my tears. “But I know now. I saw Bridgett, and she told me everything. I just wish I had known sooner…Emmett, I thought you were dead.”
I collapse against his chest and I’m relieved to feel him envelope me. “I didn’t know what to do,” he confesses. “I’ll be honest…part of me thought about just leaving you be. Letting you go on without me. I wondered if you’d be better off.”
As he says it, I realize no part of me is better off without him. I don’t even know what I’ve been doing since I last saw him. I thought I did, but now it seems like a foggy mess of waiting and hoping and trying to convince myself that he wasn’t still out there somewhere. But as I take in a deep breath of his scent and all the other intangible things about him that I somehow understand perfectly, I realize my soul has been calling out to him this whole time, longing to be made whole again in his arms.
“I’m glad that didn’t happen,” I say truthfully. “But what happens now?” Everything around us seems to go back to normal and I am painfully aware of the passing traffic around us. None of them have any idea how monumental this moment is for me and I find myself resenting them for it.
“Whatever you want to happen,” he replies, almost as a dare.
My hand slips into his as if it never left. I don’t know what I’m doing. I just start walking, urging him to follow by my side. As we walk, I look back and forth between him and the city around me, unsure of which one I want to look at more. The sight of him and the feeling of his flesh…I didn’t know if I’d ever know the feeling of it again. I’m afraid that if I blink or look away for too long, he’ll vanish like a puff of smoke.
But as I look at everything around us, it feels like I’m seeing it for the first time. As if I never really arrived here until this moment, with him taking it all in by my side. We walk down to the beach with the waves dancing around our feet. I’ve looked across this ocean a hundred times by now, but with him next to me, it feels bigger than it has before. And scary almost, like it could burst at any moment and wash me away.
Each time I glance back up at him, towering over me and seeming even taller than before, his eyes stare back. I steady myself in them and wonder if what I was really afraid of the whole time was losing him. All those moments of doubt and mistrust that crept over me relentlessly, constantly demanding to know if I could really count on him, were really just my fears of losing something so great.
When my legs feel like they could give out and the sun starts to hang lower in the sky, I stop and know that it’s time to finally just let myself accept that he’s real. He’s really here and he’s not going anywhere if I don’t want him to.
I lay my head against his chest as his hand raises, pressing his palm against mine. Our fingers mirror against each other, like two halves of flesh becoming whole again. There are a million things to say and do, and even after all this time of just walking and adjusting to him being here, I still don’t know where to start.
“I know,” he smirks, like he can read my mind. “It’s okay. We have the rest of our lives.”
“If we’re lucky,” I smile back.
Finally, he lowers his head and presses his lips to mine. I lose myself in his kiss as his tongue rolls across mine with the same rhythm of the crashing waves behind us. Against all odds, we broke all the rules and found some way to be together.
I take him back to my apartment where he lays me down and makes love to me for hours. It’s pure and gentle and everything I always knew it could be once we finally got away from Jameson. Everything I always thought I saw in him was right there the whole time.
* * *