In Austin, she deboarded the bus and found the queue for the one that would take her to Dallas, where she’d have to transfer yet again to make the long trek to California. Somehow she’d envisioned this journey would be fun but it was June in Texas, which equaled hot. And sticky. After a long fifteen minutes, the new bus rumbled into place.
And then she couldn’t make herself get on it. Once the bus rolled away from Austin, she’d officially be the farthest from home she’d ever been. Why that was tripping her up, she had no idea. Maybe because she’d come this far and nothing had changed. She was still really mad at Havana and Ember for leaving and really mad at herself for being so adamant with Isaiah that this was the only answer. But how did she go back home when she’d been so convinced that the only way things could ever work with Isaiah would be if he left with her?
Staying would have never gotten her to the point where she could relax in the knowledge that she’d never be abandoned again. He obviously didn’t get that.
She sighed. Maybe he didn’t get that because she’d never quite come out and said it, not that plainly. But then again, he hadn’t divulged all of his junk either, just dropped a lot of cryptic comments on her about how messed up he was.
The bus heading for Dallas left without her. She found a bench near the ticket window and heaved herself onto it, tucking both pieces of luggage underneath. The way this day was going thus far, she’d be using one suitcase for a pillow. Odds were good she’d be sleeping in the bus station unless she could figure out what she was supposed to do when she couldn’t stop being stuck between the past and the future.
That’s where Isaiah found her some hours later.
“Is this seat taken?”
She glanced up into Isaiah’s beautiful, precious face, both of his irises luminous in different ways, and everything inside melted. “What are you doing here?”
“Looking for you. Duh.”
He smiled, then yelped as she launched herself at him. He caught her, easily shifting to compensate for her weight while simultaneously avoiding an unnecessary trip to the bus station floor. Of course, because he was brilliant and solid and amazing and when his arms wrapped around her, her world rebalanced.
Isaiah was here. In Austin. Holding her. It was so lovely that she floated away in a haze of bliss, not at all concerned about how surreal this whole thing was. Though after a good five minutes of being consumed by all the things he’d broken open inside her, she had to know.
“Why were you looking for me?”
“To tell you how stupid I am,” he murmured into her hair. “I let you leave. The best thing that ever happened to me and I let you go for all the wrong reasons.”
“You let me go for all the right reasons,” she corrected gruffly, scared to reiterate the point, scared to talk, scared to keep silent. Scared this wasn’t the second chance she so suddenly craved. “I told you to let me go. And you did, without question. What’s that, but a demonstration of how much you love me?”
That cracked what little of her had remained whole. It was exactly that. And she’d walked away from him. She was the stupid one here.
“A better demonstration would have been to tell you why I made you dizzy all of those times.” He laughed as she narrowed her gaze, too befuddled to follow his train of thought. “With the back and forth. Never putting my stake in the ground when it came to us. I’d like to blame it on my heterochromia iridium, but that’s just a convenient excuse.”
“Your um…what?”
“Different colored eyes. I veer between extremes so often that I forget it’s not how I used to be. Syria changed me in ways I have yet to compensate for. Let me tell you about it.”
She nodded. Yes. Talking was exactly what needed to happen here, but she needed to be doing it, not him. “In a minute. I have to tell you about why I was so bent on leaving.”
“I’m sensing a very long conversation in our future, then.” He glanced around at the crowded bus station, looking none too pleased with the lack of privacy. “Maybe this isn’t the place to do it.”
“It is. Location isn’t magic,” she advised him because she didn’t care who heard. It was all so clear, especially what Havana had been trying to tell her in the car about distance. “Only you matter, not where we are. I was afraid of you leaving me, so I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to beat you at your own game.”
“But I was trying to stay.” His confusion was entirely warranted. He wasn’t the only one who’d been veering from extreme to extreme without fully understanding how dizzying it was.
“I know. I didn’t believe you would, though.”
He winced. “I deserved that. I deserve a lot of things, but you’re not one of them. Not yet.”
“But you’re here, darling. You came after me.” He’d followed her. It meant the world to her, even though she didn’t quite understand it yet. But that’s where conversation came in. Real conversation that pulled no punches, the kind they’d always excelled at. “Why did you if you didn’t think it was the right thing to do? You were so sure you had to stay, even if I left.”
“Oh, it was absolutely the right thing to do.” He hesitated for only a moment and then asked, “Do you know why the guys call me Elmer?”
She shook her head, sensing there was more to the story than what Tristan had mentioned about the relation to Elmer Fudd.
“My job was to pick up everyone’s pieces and glue them back together. That’s how we did the hard work in Syria. It wasn’t pretty. People died at our hands. Sometimes it’s hard to wake up the next morning and do it again, but that’s what I helped them do. Over and over.”
He paused for a moment, but she couldn’t be sure if it was to give her time to absorb or him. She feathered a thumb across his cheek to show she was l
istening, which had the odd effect of making him smile. She’d take it, though it didn’t do much to ease the tremors in her stomach.