“Certified genius,” I said.
For all the rigorous activities we’d partaken in the past few hours, we needed all the instant sugary energy we could get. This was as close to bliss as I’d ever been.
She went to drop another candy in my mouth, but I shook my head, lips zipped. She twisted up the rest and set it on the nightstand before burrowing back into my lap. I crossed my arms around her and held her close.
I kissed her head.
“This has been a really great time,” she said.
“Yeah,” I said. “This must have been your plan all along.”
She made a soft sound and rested her head back on my chest. “I have a confession,” she said.
I stiffened. “Okay,” I said cautiously. This would be a really bad time to learn that she was married. Or a convicted organ harvester, and maybe this was her plan all along. The sad thing was, I was in too deep to say for certain that it would matter. I hadn’t been lying when I told Bee there was never going back to the life I had before. There had always been something betweenus, but I was too damn scared to act on it. It took an actual catastrophe to get me to talk to her.
“I’m not as strong as I’ve been letting on,” she said in a rush.
I blinked but didn’t speak, thankful she couldn’t see the confusion on my face.
“I know I come off as this super confident, successful, sexy woman, and maybe a little scary and elegant person who knows what they want and who they are,” she said.
An image of her stuck in the snowsuit popped into my head, arms up and flailing like those inflatables. Or when her hair stuck up all around her, the first time I found her in the bathroom …
I opened my mouth and closed it.
“But that’s all a front. Especially lately. I am intimidating. True. And incredibly good-looking. Obviously. Especially now. With this hair.” She sighed and twirled her finger around my nipple, shooting electricity down my spine. “But the truth is, I’m not doing well. I’ve been struggling.”
I let out a breath and pulled her closer. I was tempted to mention that I could tell she wasn’t doing well when I caught her cutting her own hair in the bathroom of a tourist shop at the top of an abandoned mountain on a holiday when people usually celebrated with their loved ones, but she was sharing, and I wouldn’t derail her.
“Struggling with what?” I asked.
“Loneliness,” she said simply. Her raw honesty twisted the knife in my chest that she’d lodged there the first moment I held her. “I want to be okay with being single and quirky, but isolation can be so suffocating,” she said. “I’m in my head so much. My parents are living their best-retired life. Deckard is a good friend but has his own stuff going on. And as close as we are, we were never each other’s person. You know?” She turned to face me, still resting on my chest. Her features wereso beautiful and expressive. My heart hammered loudly as the feeling of being on a precipice tingled my toes. This was all so unexpected and maybe too fast, but looking down in those dark, vivacious eyes, I had already fallen. I was in a free fall now.
I nodded, tucking her short hair behind her ear. “I’m lonely too,” I admitted, not knowing just how true it was until I said it out loud.
“I’m sorry, Owen,” she said. She trailed her fingers over the back of my hands. “I talk big about living in the moment. And I do. But it used to be easier. Nothing changes. No matter how I act or dress, I’m still invisible. I want to live a life that is mine, but at the end of the day, I want to be able to tell somebody about it.”
I leaned down to kiss her forehead. “I understand.”
She held my gaze, searching. Had I said the wrong thing? Was I meant to say more? Loneliness was a universal epidemic but so rarely talked about. Ivy. Myself. Most of the people at Golden Sunset. Probably half this town. We were all these solo-manned vessels orbiting around each other, so rarely connecting, desperate for a real moment to tie us to this time on Earth. I’d felt a connection with her tonight. I felt the universe shifting around me.
“I’m so sorry I got you mixed up in my turning thirty crisis,” she said, her voice cracking when I was silent too long.
“I’m not sorry. There is no other place I’d rather be.”
She sucked in a ragged breath. “Really? Even with all the stupid things I’ve done because I’m scared of fading into oblivion?”
“Really. You’re just trying to change your life, and I admire that,” I said, understanding that so much of Bee’s persona was protection. The faux confidence, quick temper, and tempestuous decision-making were all the masks of a little girl screaming out for attention or love.
“I’m scared,” she said with a shaky voice. “I feel myself fading away, and I’m already a wisp of a person in this town. Nobody sees me. Nobody cares about me. And soon, I’ll just be a ghost. I’ll be worse than the abandoned statue—” Her breaths came faster, her eyes welled.
I pulled her up my body to cup her face gently.
“That’s simply not true. I see you, Bee.” I poured everything into my words. “You are the most vivid thing in every room, and it’s everybody else’s loss that they can’t see what’s right in front of them.”
She closed her eyes in pain and nuzzled into my hand. When she opened them again, she said, “And after tonight? This morning.” We both turned to the window where, outside, the storm had moved on to reveal the gentle hues of pink and dark purple, signaling the sun’s imminent arrival. Thereby ending this bubble of seclusion that led to this most wonderful turn of events. “What happens when you aren’t forced to be with me? Are you going to remember me?”
“Of course,” I said without hesitation. Would she want to see me when I was walking around town and she saw how people responded to me?
