Chapter 2
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The question to be asked: what happens now?
The funeral for Owen’s mother is held in town two days later. Dani tears through her belongings twice, trying to find something appropriate to wear. All she manages to find is an all-black evening gown that doesn’t necessarily strike an appropriate tone.
The answer:
“You decent?¹” Jamie calls through the door to Dani’s bedroom after a knock.
“Come in,” Dani says, heart throbbing in her chest as the door squeaks open and Jamie slides past it in an outfit that makes Dani’s breath catch. “Oh...You look…¹”
“I can scrub up when I need to,” Jamie tells her, shutting the door behind herself. “Funeral starts at four. Owen said we should get there early.¹”
Dani nods. “Okay.¹”
She can’t maintain eye contact for long, cannot stomach the thought of breaking apart this fragile blossoming between the two of them by admitting to the churning shame in her stomach at the thought of another funeral. Another closed casket. More muffled weeping bouncing around the heavy walls of the church.
“It’s a…” Jamie begins, taking a seat on the footstool at the end of Dani’s bread and looks her over. “It’s quite a dress.¹”
“Yeah, it’s the only thing I had in black,” Dani admits. “I-I hate it.¹”
Jamie says something about scandalizing the village. Dani says something about letting Owen down.
But: “Honestly, you don’t have to go if you don’t want to,¹” and oh—
Okay.
“I don’t need you to be my date to Owen’s mom’s funeral,¹” says Jamie and it’s a relief that she does not ask for clarification when Dani offhandedly mentions Eddie’s funeral.
She asks Jamie to help her unzip her dress, laughs when Jamie makes a joke out of it, and it is a little strange, yes, to ask this woman she doesn’t know very well—that she is astonishingly attracted to—to help her with this. There is a strange intimacy to having another person assist you with adjusting your clothing. Briefly, she remembers the female tailor Eddie’s mom hired to refit her wedding dress—the delicate splay of her fingers at Dani’s waist.
And this is similar, but it’s also different.
This isn’t just anyone. This is Jamie . Jamie, who is the strongest pull on Dani’s ability to control herself that she’s ever known. Jamie, who she’s spent the last two days—the last week , if she’s being honest with herself—imagining touching her just like this. Pulling a sweater or a shirt over Dani’s head, pushing her onto her bed with careful hands, the mark of her touch shining and shimmering on Dani’s skin and the press of Jamie’s lips to that spot.
Does being touched by your soulmate feel any different than being touched by anyone else?
Dani doesn’t know. But her chest aches with the urge to spin around, pull Jamie into a kiss and find out .
Except—
She’s not brave enough for that, is she? Not quite, or else—not yet.
She doesn’t get the chance anyway.
One moment, Jamie is dutifully pulling at the zipper at the back of Dani’s dress and then she is stepping back and away, leaving Dani’s newly-exposed skin cool by the sudden movement.
When Dani turns, Jamie is frowning, a serious look in her eye that Dani doesn’t think she’s seen in them yet.
“Are you okay?” Dani asks, dreading the answer.
Jamie stands statuesque, captured in stone and marble. All shape, no color. A pause, her paths. Her eyes roam over Dani’s face like she’s seeing her for the first time. A breath and then:
“Yeah. Yeah, ’course I am.”
Perhaps this was too quick. Are there different rules about interactions when you’re attracted to a woman? Dani has certainly had female friends who’ve helped her with difficult dresses or unruly zippers, but they were—
They were different than Jamie. That was different with them than it is with Jamie, perhaps. Dani’s stomach flips over, making her feel just the slightest bit lightheaded. She feels like an idiot.
Clearly, there are rules in effect here that she isn’t privy to.
Before she can gather enough courage to ask where exactly she went wrong, Jamie blinks as if coming back to herself and says, “I should get going.”
“Oh,” Dani breathes. “Yeah, okay.”
“I’ll...catch ya’ later, yeah?”
Dani doesn’t even have a chance to respond before Jamie is clearing her throat and going over to the door, opening it and slipping out, going away.
Dani stands there, clutching her dress up to keep it from falling around her ankles, and listens to the sound of Jamie’s footsteps as they retreat down the hallway, down the stairs, and out the front door.
When her truck rumbles to life a few moments later and sets off, getting further and further away, Dani is still standing where Jamie left her, trying to figure out how much she’s just messed up and whether or not she can fix it.
______________
The air is warm until the sun begins to set and then everything freezes over. Dani throws together dinner with her bare hands—something her mom used to make—with the children and tries very hard not to hate herself—hate that look she’d put in Jamie’s eyes before she left.
They’re not alone for very long. The back door opens and Jamie comes in slowly, like she’s hoping she could maybe go unnoticed. Their eyes meet and Dani’s fingers ache as she comes over to sit by the island—some phantom burn from holding onto something instead of just letting go.
Jamie keeps her hands in the pockets of her jacket and talks to Dani through the children. Asks how their day was, what they did. How they’re feeling. Keeps it light.
Dani wants to say that she’s sorry for whatever it is she’s done wrong. She wants to say a lot of things that she’s been biting back since they met—that have been resting sharp in her chest. But she doesn’t. Can’t. Doesn’t matter.
Hannah and Owen arrive, somber and slow, and Jamie looks so relieved at their divine intervention that it makes Dani ache all the more. Hannah takes over the cooking while Dani wraps her arms around Owen in greeting.
When she draws back, his hands catch her own and Dani realizes a moment too late that she isn’t wearing her gloves. But it doesn’t matter. It’s Owen. His lilac-tinged hand squeezes her pale one and then he draws away.
She sits side-by-side with Jamie while they eat and not once do their arms or hands brush. Dani realizes quite suddenly that she’s not the only one trying to keep her distance now.
When she’s certain she can get away with it, she glances over at Jamie, taking in her elegant profile, the dipping shadows over her expression. She has a habit of gripping her wine glass between bites, even if she doesn’t drink from it, and Dani is just allowing herself to admire the delicate curl of the other woman’s fingers when she sees it.
Her next breath is hard, like something has set her lungs on fire—filled with smoke and making her cough and choke a little. Making her suck in a deep breath after like she’s drowning, like she’s being burned alive, and it feels that way, doesn’t it? It feels like she might be.
“Are you alright, dear?” Hannah asks, leaning forward in concern.
Dani nods, sucking in another breath—a little deeper this time. Owen gets up out of his chair and rushes to the sink, grabbing a glass and filling it with water. He brings it back over and stands beside her chair while she takes it and drinks, slowly. Agonizingly. The taste of ash at the back of her throat.
“You had me worried there, Miss Clayton,” Owen says softly, patting her on the shoulder as she gives him a tired thumbs-up to show that she’s fine. “I’m not even choking about that.”
Hannah gives him a look. Miles smiles a little. Flora still looks a little too upset about Dani’s distress to care much for another pun.
As for Jamie—
She looks concerned. Eyeing Dani carefully, like she wants to reach out and touch her but can’t for some reason. Or won’t allow herself to.
Better that way , Dani thinks. She doesn’t need another reminder of what she can’t have.
“Are you okay now?” Flora asks, her little voice peaked with worry.
Dani smiles at her. Gives her a gravelly, “Yeah, I’m fine. Sorry to scare everyone. Just—” She trails off, gathering up an excuse. “Went down the wrong pipe, that’s all.”
There’s another few moments of worry, where everyone is quiet, as if they’re trying to make sure that Dani isn’t about to start choking again. But, eventually, they all go back to their food—the kids chattering at one another while Hannah and Owen talk in hushed voices, her left hand never leaving his right, their fingers tangled together on the tabletop.
Dani lifts her wine glass to her lips, glad for the static it’s created in her veins, in her limbs. Glad for the fog in her head, making her thoughts ( stupid, stupid, stupid, as if Jamie could ever—as if you could ever— stupid) harder to understand.
Making the heavy look in Jamie’s eyes a little less distant.
Dani tells herself not to look—that it wasn’t something she imagined. It wasn’t paint or a trick of the light or anything but this:
A soulmark. Spattered across Jamie’s hands. The fingertips of her left hand. Knuckle to fingernail on her right index finger.
Dani does not say: Who are they?
She does not say: Do they deserve you?
And she does not say: How much of their skin turned blue when you touched them?
She does not say anything at all.
There is nothing to say.
______________
And Dani feels foolish. Feels so, so, so silly for ever allowing herself to think it. For missing it before, somehow. Not seeing it. To even entertain the idea.
To lie in her bed at night and imagine touching Jamie’s skin with her own. Running her fingertips down Jamie’s arms or stomach or legs, painting a trail red or green or silver. Kissing her and pulling back to find Jamie’s lips flushed a bright color that matches the new one on her own.
Telling her about a girl who grew up thinking she was broken , that no one could ever—
But, no.
There’s no use in hoping for impossible things.
______________
The kids in bed, the orange glow of the fire popping light into the shadows lining their faces, and Jamie gives Dani a toast—says she’s thankful for Dani to be there.
“What about you, Poppins?¹” she says once she’s finished and Dani is far too surprised to respond, or even fathom what it is that Jamie’s just said. She can’t remember if anyone has ever spoken about her like that before and it aches.
Part of her wants to ask Jamie why . Because Jamie has a soulmate somewhere, someone else to fix those beautiful, green eyes on. Someone to go home to and kiss and love and be with, so why does she need to torture Dani any further?
What good will that do?
Instead, she just says, “No, thank you,¹” and listens as Owen cuts in, talking about his mother.
______________
“I thought you were a little batty when I met you, y’know.”
Dani looks up at Jamie, who is watching her intently in the semi-darkness of the greenhouse. The bench they’re on is small and she can feel the heat of Jamie’s leg against her own under the blanket they’re sharing for warmth.
Dangerous territory, perhaps, but it seemed right to give Hannah and Owen some time on their own after—
Well, everything.
And her stupid, traitorous heart couldn’t bear the thought of calling it a night early—had thrilled at the romantic notion of a conversation alone in the cool dark, surrounded by greenery and moonlight and the breeze whispering through the doorway.
Now Jamie is trying to make conversation while they’re pressed together, shoulder to thigh, and Dani is trying to make herself breathe normally. Act like a person.
Someone who isn’t the slightest bit heartbroken.
“Oh, yeah?” she asks, hoping her tone strikes the right note for the current mood.
“The gloves, for one.”
Dani laughs. Fixes her eyes on the ground. “And for two?” she asks.
Jamie seems to think this over for a moment. “Well...you’re American. So there’s that.”
Another laugh. In a world where Jamie is less charming, another Dani is a little annoyed with her. Here, though—
“Yeah,” she sighs. “They’ve gotten me weird looks before.”
“At first, I thought maybe you were allergic to the sun. But then I figured that doesn’t make sense since the rest of you isn’t covered all the time.”
“You can be allergic to the sun?” Dani asks, but Jamie continues on without answering.
“And then I thought: maybe she’s one of those people who’s scared of germs. But then, I figure, you wouldn’t be too keen on spending all your time around kids.”
There’s a pause and then Jamie continues, saying, “But now I think they’re just a symptom of runnin’ away from something.”
The words strike an aching chord inside Dani’s chest. She thinks of her mother. Thinks of her saying almost that exact same thing, but with a note of bitter disappointment in her voice instead of what sounds like melancholy.
“And what am I running away from?” Dani asks. Has to know.
Jamie shrugs. “Something that usually finds you anyway.”
Dani tilts her chin up to look at her so quickly that her head fills with white noise for a moment and she has to blink it away. Even if her voice sounds light, Jamie’s own eyes are downturned. Every single angle of her speaks of regret, of defeat.
“Are you running away too?”
When Jamie looks up, Dani shifts her eyes to look at Jamie’s blue-colored fingers. This, for some reason, makes Jamie crack a smile for a brief moment before it falls away. “Oh, this?” she asks, wiggling her fingers and laughing a little at herself or the situation or both. “I’ll let ya’ know as soon as I find out.”
If Dani is meant to understand what she means by that, the opposite happens. Instead, Dani finds herself more confused than ever.
“What do you mean?” she asks next, soft and measured.
A beat or two. Silence.
“Well...suppose I’m afraid it won’t work out,” Jamie confesses. Their eyes meet briefly and she must see that this has done nothing to quell Dani’s curiosity because she shakes her head and says, “The whole...soulmate thing doesn’t always pan out right, does it? I guess I’m scared that might be what happens here.”
Dani shakes her head. “I think it...I think that...if it’s mutual , then it usually works out.”
Testing the waters. Waiting for something she cannot name.
Jamie quirks an eyebrow. “Mutual?”
“Sure.”
“Isn’t it always?”
There is something alight, something dancing, inside Jamie’s eyes that Dani has never noticed before.
“Not...not always,” Dani tells her, her voice so quiet she can barely hear herself.
Jamie must know how hard it was for her to say that because she doesn’t respond. She just sits quietly, waiting to see if Dani’s brave enough to say more.
And maybe she wouldn’t be under normal circumstances. But here is this woman she’s been pining over for what feels like years but has actually been few enough days to count on two hands, and she’s lost her chance, really, so what’s the harm?
“I, uh…I left a mark on someone...once. But he didn’t…” Dani trails off and the tone shifts immediately. So quickly that it leaves both of them a little breathless as they look at one another. Dani cannot see herself, but she can guess at the way her expression has changed by the look of surprised panic in Jamie’s eyes. She pulls her gloves off, one at a time, and holds her hands up so that Jamie can see her unblemished skin. “I didn’t get one. And then he...he died and...”
Jamie blinks. Pushes her foot against the side of Dani’s beneath the blanket hanging off of them and dripping to the floor. “Oh...Poppins, I’m—I’m sorry.”
Dani shakes her head. “It’s...It’s okay. I—”
And she remembers—can taste the copper sting of blood in the air, feel the scrape of her skin against the pavement, the pained tremble in Eddie’s hands, the edge of his mark peeking out from beneath the sleeve of his sweater.
This is: the few inches of space between the two of them, these women forged of ice and bone, the tattered edge of something that might have been breathing down their necks.
“Why wouldn’t it work out?” Dani asks next, needing to know, needing to keep the words coming.
Jamie pauses for a moment, thinking this over and then she says, “Turns out she’s lost someone,” and her eyes are wide with an emotion that Dani cannot name. “I don’t think I can ask her to risk losing someone else.”
She .
The world tilts on its side.
“Why would she lose you?” says Dani. Her hands quiver. Her breath is stuttering, metallic and hard, and she forces herself to calm down, because if there could ever be a right moment for her to say it, she doesn’t think she’ll find it here.
“I don’t know,” Jamie says. “But I doubt she’d find me worth the risk.”
Gentle, cool fingers reach out and touch the skin of Dani’s wrist. Instead of pulling away, Dani turns her hand and catches Jamie’s fingers and she hasn’t been touched like this in so long. She’d nearly forgotten what it felt like.
From the look that crosses Jamie’s face as she stares down at their hands, sliding together, she must know the feeling.
“Then she doesn’t deserve you, Jamie,” Dani says softly. Does not say anything further.
There’s something light in her chest, something that feels as though it’s lifting and she knows that if she doesn’t get control of this moment, it might very well carry her away.
She’s waiting for something. For anything.
But it doesn’t come.
She pulls her hand back and tries to resist looking at it—really she does—but then she can’t help it. But another stone in her lungs, weighing her down.
Jamie has a soul mark already and it isn’t possible for her to leave another on anyone else, but Dani had been foolish enough to wish anyway.
Her hand is just as pale and bare as it has always been.
“Oh,” she whispers.
Jamie frowns, following her eyes, looking almost as disappointed as Dani feels by her unmarked skin. “What?” she asks, all the same.
Dani shakes her head. “I don’t know. I thought maybe—”
Jamie cuts her off with a kiss. It’s quick. Just the press of their lips together, but when Dani reaches out and cups the back of Jamie’s head, pulling her in and kissing her back, it changes course almost immediately. From innocent to starved in a matter of moments.
They shouldn’t do this. Jamie has a soulmate and it isn’t Dani and this whole thing is so—
There’s a tug behind Dani’s navel, some deep-set longing for something that’s already been lost.
Jamie pulls away, rests their foreheads together and Dani closes her eyes. There are breaths, short and broken, puffing against Dani’s bruised lips, her nose, her chin. Before she can find words worthy of the moment, soft fingers trail across her jaw until Jamie’s hand comes to rest at the back of her neck, brushing through her blonde hair.
“’M’sorry,” Jamie whispers, and Dani can feel their lips brush as she speaks. “I know you—”
Dani opens her eyes and Jamie swipes a thumb beneath her eye, rubbing away a wayward tear. Dani breathes— can’t breathe looking into those green eyes, into the very loss of herself, of whatever hope that’s been strangling itself inside her since dinner.
Hears herself say, “I’m the one who should be sorry,” on her next breath. Jamie presses her lips to the corner of Dani’s mouth, comforting. “You have a soulmate and I should just—”
At this, Jamie pulls back, her grip loosening. “I have a…” She frowns, reaching up to tuck some of Dani’s hair behind her ear. “Dani, do you want this?”
And she does. Oh, she does want this. More than anything in her life.
But Jamie’s fingertips are blue and Eddie is dead and Dani is just boring, old Dani. No soulmate. No soul mark. Just a woman crushed beneath the solid weight of an age-old expectation.
Jamie has someone else. Someone destined for her. And Dani can want her and kiss her and wish , but Jamie isn’t hers to take. Isn’t hers to love .
“I just want things to be simple,” she whispers.
Something flashes in Jamie’s eyes—some fervent ache that Dani cannot quite fathom. She pulls away, untangles herself, and runs her palms over her face.
“Right,” she says. “Yeah. You’re right. I’m sorry. S’my fault.”
But—
“No, wait,” Dani says, reaching out a hand, but Jamie already getting to her feet, gathering the blanket, starting towards the yard. “Jamie—”
“It’s good,” Jamie tells her, but she can’t meet Dani’s eyes as she says it. She takes a deep breath, chin trembling a little, like she’s trying not to cry. “In another life, maybe.”
She turns and leaves, disappearing into the yard, and everything shatters back into place.
Dani sits there, hands shaking at the thought of letting this moment slip from their fingers, and so full of aching love that it should be splintering her apart.
Jamie has slipped away already by the time Dani makes it back out to the fire. Hannah and Owen are waiting for her, watching for her. They are looking at her in a way that makes her sick with guilt and they presumably know all her secrets anyway. There’s no need to make an excuse.
“I’m going to…” Dani says, swallowing thickly around everything else she wants to say and can’t . “It’s late.”
They accept it so easily.
She takes her bottle of wine with her and finishes it off in her bedroom before going back out to the fire and tossing Eddie’s cracked glasses in, watching them burn, thinking maybe, just maybe— maybe it will be enough to free her.
She doesn’t sleep.
______________
The next day. Morning. Hannah making tea in the kitchen.
“How is Owen?” asks Dani, the taste of her heartbeat throbbing on the back of her tongue. “Is he—?”
“He has some things to sort out and Jamie thought it best to take some time off, too,” Hannah tells her. “I think we all just need a chance to settle.”
She has a point.
Jamie flashes in her mind. The heat of her lips and her fingers tightening in Dani’s hair. The look in her eyes when she pulled away. The shape of her in the doorway, retreating, getting further and further away.
There and gone.
______________
Later, Flora says, “Your gloves! Did you lose them? I can help you find them. I’m very good at finding things. Once, Miles lost his—” and Dani lets herself be led out to the garden for a walk.
Imagines standing in an empty shadow, the light just out of reach. A phantom touch to the back of her neck. Imagines a cliff, the edge of it, and falling falling falling.
Goes to bed early every night for three days. Doesn’t sleep well. Doesn’t know how. Lies in bed and tries to make sense of anything, everything, but can never quite manage it.
She cannot stop feeling like the world is spinning too fast and she is simply stuck standing still.
______________
Jamie’s phone number is listed on the memo pad kept on the fridge. It’s written in a small, slanted scrawl that has to be her own and Dani picks up the pad and takes it with her. Cradles the phone between her ear and her shoulder. Takes a deep breath. Types the number.
Her heart jumps each time it rings.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
At the tail end of the fourth ring, Jamie answers.
There’s noise behind her—music, it sounds like—and Dani can just barely hear her, “Hullo?”
“Jamie?” Dani says. “Hey, it’s...it’s Dani.”
It’s late. Too late to be calling, maybe. The children are in bed and Hannah probably is, too. All the lights are out in the kitchen, but there’s still the glowing yellow of a lamp in the hallway breaking the shadows into shards. Jamie breathes on the other end—the sound goes right through her; so very another life maybe —and Dani can feel the muscles in her arm trembling as she holds the phone up.
“Oh,” Jamie says, a surprised sound. Then, “Anything the matter?”
Dani wonders at the level of honesty her answer requires—with all the hollow of the hours apart—and s’my fault, surrounded by only her lonesome and lost and the chill in the air, drifting through the house.
“No, I just—” She cuts herself off. Clears her throat. “I just wanted to...talk to you. See how you’re doing.”
She can hear footsteps and the rustling of fabric. Dani panics for a moment, wondering if she’s caught Jamie at a truly terrible moment—is her soulmate at her flat with her? She imagines some long-limbed woman spread out beneath Jamie’s sheets and feels so very resigned —trapped and flightless.
The music gets quieter. Jamie must have gone to turn it down.
She says, “I’m alright. And you?”
Dani considers it as she stands there in the darkness, in the clothes of a starbent woman—her sweater hanging down around her, baggy and soft—and she cannot breathe so she thinks tell me I’m not imagining it please oh please tell me I’m not the only one —and pretending that her body is not her own, that the one that it fits inside of is not somewhere else or with someone else. That, between them, there is only the night sky.
“We’re okay here. I just...When are you...When are you coming back?”
Another pause.
“Right, uh...I dunno. Soon, yeah. Sometime. Why?”
Dani wonders. Thinks it over. Says, “We just...miss you here, that’s all.”
“Who’s we?” Jamie asks.
Oh.
“Well...Hannah and Flora and…” She swallows thickly. Doesn’t finish.
Her lack of answer spreads out, becoming silence, becoming tense .
After a little while, Jamie says, “They can handle a couple more days, I think,” in a way that sounds like she’s trying very hard to sound calm, collected.
“Yeah,” Dani says. “Yeah, definitely.”
She pulls the phone closer to her ear, until it aches against her. Twists and leans back against the wall, looking down at her feet. At the world spinning beneath them.
“Look, I should probably go,” Jamie says and Dani nods in agreement.
“Yeah, I...I’m sure you have...someone waiting or—”
Jamie’s scoff cuts her off. “Right. Yeah.”
It all comes together, as it does, as it has—the wounds, the sense of nameless dread she felt upon the call being patched through, the sense that, whatever she says, it’s going to be entirely the wrong thing.
Just like that, everything she might have wanted to say instead withers away and dies at the corners of her lips.
“Bye, Dani,” Jamie says.
The line clicks dead.
“Goodnight,” Dani says too late.
Always too late.
______________
A storm brews on the flanks of Dani’s mind for the rest of the week, and it starts so small and slight that, at first, she cannot even name it.
But then there is thunder and lightning and the angry lash of rain against every thought, every moment she dissects, every word she hears in Jamie’s voice.
She finds the library one morning, tucked away on the first floor by the school room, and pokes around at the dusty titles for a few hours. Pulls out a book or two that seem relevant.
But most of what they say are things she already knows:
One soul mark—one soul mate per person. No exceptions. If Jamie has one, then Dani is not it.
Hers is someone else, out there somewhere. Waiting for her to find them. But—
She tries not to think about that. Instead, she thinks of other things. Wonders what Jamie’s soulmate looks like. What she’s like. How they met and how they touched for the first time. How she could know that Jamie is the one for her and not throw her arms around her and never let her go.
Falling in love with someone you aren’t destined for will lead to nothing but heartache.
That’s what one of the books she finds tells her. It’s a story about a man and a woman who are not soulmates, but love each other anyway, until it kills them both.
And she knows that’s true—some part of her thinks it must be—except—
She struggles to put it into words.
If asked, she may say this: the worst part of loving someone you cannot have is knowing exactly what it is you’re missing.
______________
Hannah and Dani sit beside one another in the sitting room one evening, after the children have been put to bed. A fire has been made and Hannah has a prayer book open on her lap and keeps fiddling with her necklace. Dani has a book, too. Another tragic romance about people who are not meant for one another, with a worn spine and dusty pages.
She reads the same sentence over and over again, comprehending it less and less every time.
“I hope you don’t mind me prying,” Hannah says after some time, “but are you alright, dear? I know we haven’t known each other long, but you haven’t seemed like...yourself these past few days.”
Dani considers this. Feels the ever-present sting of her eyes; from crying, or exhaustion, or heartbreak or all three.
“I’m...Things are just...complicated right now,” she says.
“Might I do anything to help?”
Such an honest question. A wave of affection, so strong it nearly knocks her over, washes over her.
“Thank you,” she says. “I just...I don’t think there’s anything that could help.”
Hannah presses her lips together. Flips a page in her book. Dani’s breath rattles in her chest.
After a moment, Hannah says, “I was married once,” rather abruptly, and then hastily tacks, “Before I met Owen,” at the end.
Dani stares at her. “You were?”
“I was. For quite some time, actually.”
“What—” Dani tries to clear her throat, but can’t quite manage it. Continues on anyway. “What happened? If you...I mean, if you’re comfortable talking about it.”
Hannah gives her a fond smile. “There were years when I wasn’t,” she says. “But it’s gotten so much better with time.”
That old adage.
“We were an odd pair, getting married without being soulmates. The whole thing nearly killed my dear mum.” She is silent for a moment, eyes lost in some distant memory. “But Sam and I were determined. And then—Well, that’s the thing about fate, isn’t it dear? It will come knocking whether you are waiting for it, hoping for it, tracking it down, or burying yourself as deeply as you can to hide from it.”
Dani swallows thickly, focuses . Something in Hannah’s voice has sent the floor beneath her feet shifting and changing; the humidity and heat of the fire, the flush at the nape of her neck, spreading up to her ears.
“Sam came home one day with what looked like red lipstick on his cheek and packed his bags,” Hannah continues, “and then, of course, Mrs. Wingrave was kind enough to open her home to me.”
And Dani, guarded as ever, prods for more. “How did you...How did you get through that?”
She can’t imagine.
Jamie has never been hers and Dani feels as though she’s only just come to realize that—in the understanding that she never can be—half of her has been missing for her entire life. Every time she breathes, she smells Jamie’s rose water hair, tastes her gracious lips. Every time she blinks, she sees Jamie’s green eyes, tears held in and pulsing, threatening to spill over any moment. This is the only person Dani will ever long for, her heart has decreed, and yet she is someone that Dani can never have, and anger boils up in her chest, low and curdling. The world is a mercurial, rotten thing. It decides who you are and what you can have without ever giving you a say in the matter.
Hannah says: “I don’t know. Truly.”
Then: “Believing that I had lost my only chance at real love wasn’t an experience I would wish on any other soul.”
Dani nods. Knows the feeling.
Hannah presses on, always on.
“But then Mrs. Wingrave put me in charge of hiring a cook to make sure the children and I always had someone to pay us mind when her and Mr. Wingrave were away. And—”
“You met Owen,” Dani finishes, liking the way that Hannah’s lips turn up into an enchanting smile at the mention of him.
“I met Owen,” Hannah says.
A companionable silence follows this—just the two of them sitting there quietly, basking in the warmth of a happy ending, no matter the twists and turns life might try to lobby at it.
“I’m not one to believe that happiness lies in anyone but ourselves,” says Hannah, voice pitched soft and sincere. “But I do believe it can be found by accepting that we deserve to be loved.”
Dani’s breath snags in a quiet sob. In her life, she has cried and she has screamed, and she’s tried to be all things to all people, but no one—not one person—has ever asked her what in the name of all things she wants for herself. What she longs for and who she loves and how she wants to be. Who she wants to be.
Eddie had loved her, hadn’t he? It had been in a way that Dani could not readily return, but it was love all the same. But because she had no physical proof that she was meant to be his, she hadn’t wanted to let him. She’d fought against it as much as she could bear to, so that in the end, Eddie hadn’t even liked her. Not really.
And she thought that was something she’d earned. What she deserved for daring to not be enough . It was why she could long for Jamie—someone she cannot keep—as much as she wanted without any expectation of getting anything in return.
She’d thought that was just how it had to be.
But Hannah is smiling at her, kind and hopeful, and Dani realizes she might be wrong.
It’s possible, isn’t it?
In the end, aren’t all things?
So she makes up her mind.
______________
The morning of Jamie and Owen’s first day back, Dani rises with the sun and takes her time getting ready. Combs her hair all the way through twice. Pulls it back and stares at herself in the mirror. Takes it back down. Sprays perfume into the air three times and walks slowly through it. Does it again. Brushes her teeth for three full minutes and gargles with mouthwash twice.
Somehow, she is still in the greenhouse before Jamie arrives. Her heart thumps nervously in her chest and she avoids looking at the bench towards the front of the space. Forces herself to stand still, looking out through the foggy panes of glass to the morning sky, the sun slanting orange through the glass roof.
After what feels like an eternity, there are footsteps behind her.
When she turns, Jamie is there— actually there; not in her imagination; not in her fevered dreams caught in snatches of restless sleep. She’s there and she’s staring at Dani as if she’s certain that she cannot be real and her big eyes are filled with tears that won’t fall, like ripples in the pond, like wildfire, like—
Home .
Jamie blinks away any sign of emotion and fixes a serious expression upon her gentle features. They stare at each other like it’s been months instead of days. Years, maybe, full of longing neither of them has tried to voice aloud, both of them made more certain of their separate conclusions by the separation.
Dani stands there, beneath Jamie’s damning gaze, and tells herself to be brave. To just say it. Because if she doesn’t, then she’ll live the rest of her life wondering what might have happened if she had.
“Oh, Poppins. You’re here,” Jamie says softly, hushed awe and quiet disbelief. Sends it across the space between them on the air of a question, perhaps.
And it’s as if all the breath has been stolen out of Dani’s chest, as if she’s been emptied of any practiced speech she might have otherwise prepared. She can’t think, can’t breathe, can’t feel her cold fingers as they twist together in front of her. Because Jamie is there and she may be trying to look unaffected, but she’s on the verge of tears and Dani wants nothing more than to stay in this moment forever. The two of them. Alone. Forget the outside world. Together again.
“So are you,” she says.
They’ve been friendly in this space. Cordial. More than friendly, even. They’ve spoken openly and honestly and have surrendered themselves to this unnamed thing between them; they have been whatever versions they could employ at the time, but this is different: Dani suddenly finds that she cannot fight herself one moment more.
“I have something I need to say,” she says next, hoping that it’s enough to get Jamie to stay —if only for a little while.
“Yeah?” Jamie asks, flicking her eyebrows upwards. “Don’t let me stop you.”
The cold digs tight into Dani’s bones and she takes a few steps forward, trying to close that distance as much as she can manage without Jamie running away.
“I’m not sorry we kissed,” Dani says, her voice a fever-pitch. “And I know you have a soulmate and we haven’t known each other very long, but I’m not sorry and I don’t regret it. I only regret that I didn’t kiss you sooner.”
Jamie deflates. That’s the word for it. She stands there looking just as lost as Dani feels. She crosses her arms, that tried and true tell. “Dani—”
“For a really long time, I thought that I was broken,” Danie continues. “When...when Eddie got his soul mark and I didn’t, I thought it was because I wasn’t good enough for it. That it meant there was something wrong with me. And when he...I thought it was because I hadn’t loved him enough or... been enough.”
She feels rather than sees as Jamie moves a little closer. “Oh, Dani,” she says, but Dani keeps going.
“So I ran. And I kept myself away from everybody and tried to build these...walls.” She closes her eyes for a moment. Takes a deep breath. When she opens her eyes, Jamie is watching her, waiting patiently, looking like she wants to intervene and is just barely holding herself back. “But the truth is that the moment I met you...it was like they never even existed. And I was running away from everything, yeah. I know. But...I think...I think you might be what I was running toward.”
The air fizzles as the words fall away. It’s electric and sparking, maddening really, and Dani only wishes she’d said it sooner.
“What?”
It’s a nice change: Dani isn’t the only one who’s shaking anymore.
“And I know you already have a soulmate,” she says to Jamie, the soft-eyed, North star love of her life, gone pale and careful. “But every time I touch you, I can’t help wishing it were me.”
Jamie: blinks ; takes in a nervous breath.
“I—” she begins, and then clears her throat. “Dani, I—”
There are a few steps, Dani drawing dangerously close. “You said you’re not sure that your soulmate would want you,” she says, voice as soft as the breeze, not trusting herself to be any louder. “But I do, Jamie. I want—” Her voice breaks and Jamie is still staring at her, struck. “ I want you. And I don’t care about what some stupid mark says. You’re it for me.”
Jamie drops her eyes down to the stone floor and the greenhouse is awash with the early morning light—Dani’s vision is blurred by her stinging tears—but she can see that Jamie’s shoulders are shaking, that she is drawing in on herself.
Dani opens her mouth to apologize, goes to apologize, but she can’t—
With a burst of fervor, Dani grabs Jamie’s hand—slides their skin together—and tugs her forward so she can kiss her with a force that should knock them off their feet, but doesn’t somehow. There’s only a brief moment’s hesitation before Jamie kisses her back, hands moving to Dani’s waist, fingers digging into hips below her below, sharp like knives, like she’ll never let go. And Dani doesn’t want her to.
Not ever.
It only lasts a few moments before Jamie pulls away, whispering, “Wait,” into Dani’s mouth.
“I’m sorry...I didn’t mean to—” says Dani, pulling away and trying to catch her breath.
“No, not—” Jamie begins.
“I just—”
There’s more she wants to say: that she’s not actually sorry; that she loves her; that she doesn’t care, she’ll take whatever scraps Jamie has left, whatever she can give.
But then Jamie says, “Poppins, wait,” and everything inside of her falls silent.
“I have stuff to say, too,” she says next, but Dani can’t stop staring at her lips.
Her hands move up to cup Jamie’s face in her palms, to catch her and bring her down to her lips again, but she hesitates at the look in Jamie’s eyes. Brushes her thumb over Jamie’s cheekbones.
“I...I know what it’s like to feel...lost,” she says. “Like you can’t...find your way. And I’m...My whole life, I haven’t ever wanted to bother with anyone because...because people aren’t worth it. They promise you things they can’t give ya’ and they... take from you things you don’t have and they’re not...worth it.”
Dani blinks. Swallows thickly. Waits for the other shoe to drop.
Jame’s eyebrows furrow, her thumb moving down to trace Dani’s lips. “I didn’t want to be... meant for anybody. I thought it was a load of bollocks, honestly. Not getting a say like that. And I always thought, if I ever found that person I’d tell ’em to bugger off.” She pauses, tongue flicking out to lick her dry lips. Dani’s eyes track the movement. “But now that I…” She blinks. Shakes her head. “I can’t… do that. Because I was wrong. It’s not a trap or a cage or anything like that. It’s...it’s the best thing in the world. And I don’t think I could give it up for anything.”
It’s as if Dani can feel every heartbeat her heart has ever hammered. Every emotion she has ever felt sparks around her: young and furious because one touch, just one, and Eddie wouldn’t stop trailing after her; bright and frightened because Jamie’s lips were softer than she thought they could ever possibly be and—
She tastes them on her tongue. These emotions. The throb of her heart. Her breath, her lungs, expanding and contracting.
“Okay,” she whispers. Resigned. “I...I understand.”
Except, when she goes to pull away, Jamie refuses to loosen her hold. Keeps her close. Says, “Dani, no, it’s not—”
And Dani struggles. Pulls a little. Has to get out because how cruel is it, expecting her stay after that?
She says, “Jamie, I—”
But Jamie shakes her head. Pulls her close. Presses their foreheads together and something crosses her face then—some memory or vision of the future—and then she smiles. This teary-eyed, blinding thing. “Dani,” she says. “It’s you .”
Dani frowns. “What do you—?”
“This.” She lifts her hand and wraps her fingers around Dani’s wrist, drawing her attention down to those blue fingertips that have haunted Dani’s every thought since she first saw them. “It’s you.”
“I don’t…” Dani shakes her head. Can’t possibly imagine what—
“You’re it for me, too.”
Dani pulls her closer, looks between Jamie’s eyes and the blue on her skin. “You mean—” she begins, but there isn’t room to finish.
Because: “The other day. In your room. When you asked me to unzip you. I...I touched you and—”
And then: “I didn’t tell you because I was worried I would scare you off, and then, that night…”
At once, heat flares in Dani’s chest, sliding up her neck and behind her ears. Remembers:
I’m afraid of what might happen.
She’s lost someone.
I don’t think I can ask her to risk losing someone else.
Before Eddie, before leaving her life behind to move to another country, Dani never considered herself to be brave. Bold. But she spent so many sleepless nights lying alone and thinking and realizing and she was ready to shoulder this for the rest of her life and love as she could and teach and help others and there was bravery to that. There had to be or else there was nothing .
And there was bravery with this, too: to diving into something that she did not think she could claim, and by all rights should have never known.
But—
“Are you saying that…”
She trails off. Can’t even bring herself to say the words.
Fortunately, she doesn’t have to.
Jamie pulls away completely and Dani is worried for exactly two seconds before Jamie thrusts out her hand.
“Hi, I’m Jamie. It’s really nice to meet you.”
A proper introduction. A redo.
Dani laughs and takes Jamie’s hand. Shakes it.
“Dani Clayton,” she says.
Jamie grins. “Nice to meet you, Dani Clayton. Well, would you look at that.” She pulls her hand back and feigns befuddlement as she looks down at her blue fingers. “It seems my soulmate might be Mary Poppins. You don’t mind if I call you ‘Poppins,’ do you?”
Biting her lip to keep from smiling too wide, Dani shakes her head. “Not at all, but can I ask you a question?”
“Ask away, my dear Poppins,” Jamie says.
“If I’m your soulmate, where’s my mark?”
Jamie pretends to ponder this. “That is funny, isn’t it?” She strokes her chin thoughtfully and Dani can’t stop giggling, can’t stop this feeling spreading through her muscles and veins—this love and devotion for the woman in front of her, so strong she feels like she could faint from it. “Y’know, it might be on your back.”
“Is that so?” Dani asks.
Jamie hums. “I believe it is. I’d love to get you out of those clothes so I can check for myself.”
Here, Dani loses it, falling into Jamie’s arms and lightly punching her in the shoulder as she laughs. “You’re ridiculous.”
“And you , Poppins, are stuck with me,” Jamie says.
“Lucky me.”
She leans up and kisses Jamie again, light and careful. Jamie presses into it, gently, and there is nothing that she can say that will ever be good enough, so she lets the kiss linger for a moment. When she pulls away, Jamie’s eyes hold some emotion that Dani does not recognize.
She only has a moment to wonder about it, though, because then Jamie is kissing her again, hard and fierce, lips and tongue, like she’s claiming her. They’re still not touching completely somehow—a few inches still left between their bodies—and that just won’t do. Dani closes the gap by stepping forward, pressing as close as she can manage without knocking them off balance. She wraps her arms around Jamie’s neck and gets a soft, shocked noise breathed against her lips in return. Jamie is a good kisser. This isn’t surprising, no, but Dani still finds herself shocked. Jamie’s straight, white teeth graze against Dani’s bottom lip, nibbling at it a little before smoothing her tongue over it.
Jamie skates her palms down Dani’s sides to her hips so she can pull her closer, and then one of her hands slips around to rest over her back pocket. Vaguely, Dani recalls having had this done to her before by Eddie once upon a time, but when Jamie flexes her hand in a squeeze, it’s nothing like that at all . Dani can’t even remember how to actually form a sentence for a moment. She ends up pressed against one of the counters, tucked away in the corner of the greenhouse, pinned by Jamie’s body and then a thigh slips between her legs and presses up, making her gasp.
“Shit, Dani, is that—” Jamie gulps, pulling back enough to meet Dani’s wide, dark eyes. “Can I—?”
“ Yes ,” Dani hisses and she’s so surprised by herself that she feels dizzy. She didn’t know she could want anyone like this . Jamie pulls back the tiniest bit, trying to give her room, but Dani loops her fingers through the belt loops of her jeans and tugs her back in, moving her own thigh closer.
Jamie’s breathing stutters. “ Dani. ”
The quality her voice has taken—that gravelly rasp—gives her away. And it isn’t like Dani has a lot of experience with this, but she knows that voice. She knows what it means. She shifts her thigh up between Jamie’s legs and she’s so warm . She kind of feels like this isn’t something that’s actually happening right now and the strangeness of it slams her in the chest.
Jamie groans and her eyes are starting to look just the tiniest bit panicked, so Dani kisses her again. “I’m okay,” she breathes, trying to reassure her. “This is good. Don’t stop.”
“The kids,” Jamie breathes, kissing her again. “We should stop. I wanna...I wanna take my time with you, Dani. I—”
“They’re asleep,” Dani tells her. “And...when they’re not, Hannah is there.”
Jamie pulls back a little, her eyes roaming over Dani’s face, looking for some sign of hesitation that isn’t there. “Don’t you want to do this...properly?”
Dani presses her lips to Jamie’s neck, her jaw, the side of her mouth. “‘Properly’ can wait,” she whispers. “I don’t know that I can.”
“Okay,” Jamie finally says. “Okay. I don’t want you to regret—”
Now it’s Dani’s turn to pull back and she does, meeting Jamie’s eyes, brushing her fingers through her curly, brown hair. “I’m not going to regret you. Ever .”
Relief bites at Jamie’s cheeks, along with the cold, morning air, but she smiles all the same. “Never’s a long time,” she says.
Dani kisses her. “Here’s hoping.”
And then Jamie’s hands feel like they’re everywhere at once as she leans back in. On Dani’s hips, on her ribs, skimming her fingers just below her breasts, cupping her neck and drawing her close.
That’s how it goes for a while—Dani pressed back into the stinging countertop and Jamie more shy and nervous than she thought her capable of, carefully touching her with light fingers that begin to linger more and more just beneath the underwire of her bra, through her thick sweater. Like she’s nervous she’s going to hurt her or something and Dani kind of wants to just grab her wrists and put her hands on her breasts already, but she can’t. She’s never guided someone into feeling her up before.
Instead, she makes this impatient noise in the back of her throat and pushes her own coat off her shoulders and onto the floor. She starts unzipping Jamie’s coveralls next, pushing them down her shoulders and arms, trying to pull her free. It’s too cold to pull the shirt she’s wearing over Jamie’s head, but Dani can still slip her hand up to press against the curve of her spine. Can still slip her fingertips beneath the edge of Jamie’s jeans.
At the touch, Jamie’s eyes drift closed, her breath coming out in pants through parted lips. She reaches forward and tugs Dani’s sweater up a little, revealing the pale of her stomach in a thin line that makes Jamie look completely struck .
Fortunately, she doesn’t do much more than that, which is good—there’ll plenty of time for that the next time they do this—because Dani can’t actually remember what underwear she put on that morning. She’d been in too much of a rush. And she’d rather not be in her skivvies when it’s cold like this, no matter how hot Jamie’s touch leaves her.
Her chest feels heavy and everything is foggy, like she’s halfway in a dream or underwater or in outer space. Like she could explode any moment.
“I wish I could see you,” Jamie whispers, kissing Dani’s nose, then her eyelids.
“Next time,” Dani tells her and Jamie pulls back, smiling.
“Yeah?”
Dani nods. “Yes. Now kiss me again.”
“Aye, aye.” Jamie gives her a goofy little grin and kisses her, flicking her tongue back into Dani’s mouth and making Dani gasp.
And Dani can’t stop touching her—can’t stop running her palms over Jamie’s soft, skinny ribs and running her fingers through her unruly hair. She wants to dig her nails into Jamie’s hips and pull her in, closer, and she tries to pick that apart piece-by-piece—is it a soulmate thing?—because she’s never wanted to do that to anyone before.
When Jamie ducks her head into Dani’s shoulder, sucking at her neck and making her whine and press her eyes shut, Dani can smell her deodorant—something natural and vaguely lemon-scented; the light smell of her cologne—and want slams into her chest hard enough to knock her breath away.
Jamie slips her hand underneath Dani’s sweater and slides it up, cupping one of her breasts in her hand through the fabric of her bra.
“Jesus, Jamie,” Dani whispers as Jamie’s fingers squeeze, somehow managing to catch her nipple between two of her fingers despite the barrier between their skin. She arches a little.
Jamie laughs in a way that’s so charming, Dani is temporarily stunned. “That good?”
“So good.”
Her cool fingers slip beneath her bra next, mimicking the previous motion and then she’s pulling Dani’s sweater up enough to duck her head, pulling down on her bra. A warm tongue flicks over her nipple and Dani groans, tipping her chin so she can see.
“Fuck,” Jamie curses into her skin, like she can’t believe this is happening either.
One hand flies up so Dani can weave her fingers into Jamie’s hair again as she watches Jamie close her lips around one breast, then the other. “Jamie, please .”
Dani thinks she hears her curse under her breath in that gentle and awed tone she keeps using, and then Jamie stands back up. Her hands move down to grapple with the button of Dani’s jeans, rushing to clumsily undo it and pull her zipper down.
“Dani,” she says, “are you—?”
“Yes,” Dani mumbles, pulling Jamie even closer. “I’m great. Please .”
Relief floods Jamie’s expression and she nods, licking her lips, and then her hand slides down Dani’s stomach and into her pants and—
Oh .
At the first touch, Dani groans, can’t help it, and arches against her.
“God, Dani, you’re so—” Jamie begins, looking at her in awe.
Knowing what she’s going to say next, Dani curls her fingers back into Jamie’s hair—too embarrassed to handle her saying that quite yet—and kisses her again. Fortunately, Jamie seems to get the hint to keep moving.
So she does.
“You’re a dream,” Jamie whispers, as her fingers slide around and then in , moving with a steady confidence that probably shouldn’t surprise Dani the way it does. “Better than.”
Clearly, she knows what she’s doing and she knows it well. She does this thing with her thumb that Dani’s only other partner never tried or knew enough to do—this combination of flicking and swirling. It makes Dani groan and swear and push herself down on Jamie’s hand, her vision going white behind her eyelids.
“ Jesus ,” she hears herself say, her voice unfamiliar to her own ears. One of her hands comes out to rest on the countertop behind her, to grip it white-knuckle-tight because she’s worried she’s going to collapse. “ Yes .”
It’s so good. Jamie is so good and Dani is so in love with her already. Jamie with her wide, careful eyes and her blinding smile, her impassioned expressions. Jamie, who is her soulmate and Dani had been preparing to try her best to get Jamie to stay with her and forget about destiny, but she hadn’t known enough to expect this.
But it’s real. It isn’t a dream. Dani’s head tips back and her eyes find the ceiling, tracing the faintly yellow diamond of light coming through the dusty glass. A slim arm slips around her waist, pulling her closer, and it’s too much. Way too much.
She feels dizzy and off balance and so nervous that she can’t actually breathe because this is really happening .
“Jamie,” she hisses, and Jamie chooses then to stop kissing the side of her jaw, to pull back and look at her, those green eyes so imploring, so entranced, another finger slipping into her, and Dani feels the exact moment that she tips over the edge. Her nails dig into the metal countertop, her other hand clenching the fabric of Jamie’s t-shirt. Those quick fingers keep moving, stroking and pumping through the final waves and bringing her back down, and she drops her forehead forward to rest on Jamie’s bony shoulder.
After a moment, Jamie pulls her hand out, resting it on the counter on Dani’s other side and letting Dani’s weight slump into her. She presses a kiss to the top of Dani’s head, rubbing her back through her sweater with her other hand.
“I’m glad it’s you,” Jamie whispers in the near-silence, once Dani pulls her head back up. Her expression is so open and honest that it breaks Dani’s heart. She wonders if anyone else has ever gotten to her like this and has to blink away the urge to cry as a surge of startling affection washes over her. “If it has to be anyone, I’m so glad it’s you, Dani.”
“Me too,” Dani says.
They just stare at each other for a second. Dani’s eyes keep darting down to Jamie’s lips, pink and smudged from being kissed too much.
There’s more to say, really there is. But there’s a knock on the doorway of the greenhouse and Dani’s heart jumps into her throat. They’re lucky, really, because Jamie is some sort of plant hoarder and they’re mostly blocked from view. From this angle, whoever it is shouldn’t see much more than Jamie’s back, which gives Dani time to pull her bra and sweater down, button her jeans back up. And then Jamie ducks down to grab her coveralls and tie the arms around her waist.
They’re still ruffled, yes, but at least they are tucked back into their clothes enough to prevent too big a scandal.
It’s Hannah, standing in the doorway with an amused smile. Her eyes flick over Dani and Jamie in turn, looking at their messy hair and wrinkled clothes. It’s clear from her expression that she knows exactly what it is that she’s just walked in on.
“Hannah, hi!” Dani says, her voice too loud. Jamie winces. “Hi, we were just—”
“Flora and Miles are having breakfast,” Hannah tells her. “I told them I would come and find you.”
Dani nods a little too vigorously, her cheeks and ears hot. “Right, thank you!”
“Too loud,” Jamie mutters, shaking her head.
Dani throws her a panicked look and then turns her attention back to Hannah. “I’ll be right there.”
Hannah purses her lips like she’s trying to keep from laughing, but nods. “Sure thing. You take your time, love.”
With that, she turns and heads away, back towards the house, leaving Dani to whirl around to Jamie in a panic.
“She knew, Jamie,” she says and she wants to feel embarrassed about that, but one look from Jamie and she feels herself calm. “Holy crap, she knows . I’m so...God, this is so embarrassing.”
Jamie laughs and wraps her arms around Dani’s waist, pulling her into an embrace. “Coulda been worse,” she says. “Might have been one of the kids.”
Dani swats her shoulder. “Don’t say that.”
“Hannah won’t ever bring it up again,” Jamie says. “Don’t worry about it.”
A kiss is pressed to her cheek and Dani sighs, lets the moment linger just a few breaths longer. “You’re worth it, you know,” she says, soft and easy.
“Worth what?” Jamie asks.
When she pulls away, something flashes in Jamie’s eyes—the same fervor that had been there when they were pressed together just minutes before, her body warm, her hand quick, and Dani hadn’t known it could be like that .
“The wait,” she whispers. “The risk.” And she pulls Jamie into another kiss.
She wonders if she’ll get used to the way it feels to touch Jamie like this, to be touched by Jamie’s gentle fingers, her smoothing thumb. Everything she was told it would be like. Everything anyone ever told her to expect. More, because nothing anyone could have said could have properly explained that love can be like this —that it would feel like everything she’s ever been or ever wanted to be has come together all at once.
For the first time, she can see the years rolling out in front of her. She can imagine the nights, and cooking dinner together. A house of their own and a dog and maybe—somehow—a baby one day, too. A commitment that she’ll never, ever break because how could she?
Most of all, though, when she thinks about the future now—that shadowed, grim thing that used to plague her thoughts at all hours of the day—all she can see is Jamie.
And isn’t that a blessing of its own?
“So are you,” Jamie says, breathless, in a tone that implies strongly that, no matter what, this answer will never change.
This is I love you , even without saying so. This is be brave, love and stay with me and you’re finally here . It is the first time that either of them has said exactly what they mean. And in this moment, they understand that there is nothing to be afraid of.
______________