Page 115 of One Last Thing Before You Go

He’s just as handsome as ever with his charming scruff, glacier-blue eyes, and broad shoulders. His puffy coat covers his chest and arms, but my memory isn’t bad enough that I don’t remember the way his muscles look beneath it.

“Yeah,” I manage to breathe. “Mine.”

“I—I thought you were in New York. Your brother…”

I look around for Daniel, but he and Brandon have secretly wandered off, leaving me and Knox alone.

“Yeah, I did leave. But. But I came back.” My pulse quickens, breathing speeds.

“Why’s that?”

“None of it felt right. I missed Ceres Cove and I missed… I missed people.”

“People, huh?” His infamous lopsided smile makes an appearance, causing my heart to perform some serious acrobatics in my chest. But just as quickly as it pops up, it disappears, breaking my heart just a little more than it already was.

“You wanna show me around? Tell me what my photos are doing all over the place?”

“Sure,” I say, turning to face the closest one to us. A gorgeous scene of a pelican by the dock, about to take flight in the cold spring morning air. Below the frame, a small sign with Knox’s name. “Daniel found these photos in the SD card you gave him and showed them to me. They were so beautiful… I decided to print some and put them around for sale. I promise I plan to deposit every single cent into your account. Daniel still has your bank info from before. I don’t know much about photography, so I had someone come and asses them. So that’s how I marked them with those prices. I didn’t just arbitrarily pick a number or whatever.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

“But now that I think about it, I realize it could be construed as crossing a huge line. A total breach of trust.” Shit. My stomach churns. I run my fingers through my hair. “All this time I thought I was doing something good and now I realize it might’ve actually backfired.”

He laughs. He actually laughs, his eyes full of warmth. “Lottie, relax. I gave Daniel the card, and possession is nine tenths of the law, haven’t you heard?”

“I can’t tell if you’re joking or not, but if you are, you kind of suck right now because I’m trying to make things right in any way that I can and⁠—”

“Hey. Relax. I didn’t mean to make you feel bad. I didn’t want the photos anymore. But I’m glad you liked them. I’m glad they’re being enjoyed. And thank you for crediting me and putting them up for sale.”

“You’re welcome.” I want to smile. I want to tell him how happy I am that he’s here.

“So if you saw these photos, it means you saw…” His cheeks flush, and suddenly he can’t look me in the eye. He scratches the back of his neck, visibly uncomfortable for the first time since seeing each other again.

“I… Yes. I did. I saw the other ones, too.” I take a deep breath, everything coming back to me all at once. Coming home from New York in the middle of the night, having an emergency meeting with my siblings, asking Daniel and Brandon for the loan for this store, followed by my brother handing me the two things Knox left behind: his leather jacket and the SD card.

“I think you need to see what’s in there, sis. I think you need to see the photos,” Daniel said when he handed me the card, his face somber.

I remember going through the pictures, my jaw dropping at the beautiful way in which he captured the town, the people in it. And me. Hundreds and hundreds of pictures of me.

I realized then and there why Knox kept telling me I wasn’t ready to see them. Because somehow, without using any words, he had managed to unearth the truth behind this town and present everything that was good and pure about it. And I was too filled with disdain to see it. I rejected my hometown, but most of all, I rejected myself. And here was this man, capturing all kinds of seemingly immaterial moments, representing them in a way that showed their true grandeur and meaning. A group of older women talking on a park bench became an image of decades’ long friendship and love. The demolition of shelves in an old bookstore became a symbol of growth and rebirth. And a woman throwing her head back in laughter with sleeprumpled hair became a perfect image of me, utterly in love with the man behind the camera.

There was beauty and truth in so many things I hadn’t let myself see. And he was able to capture every second of it. Each photograph became an eye-opening gift. So I felt the need to celebrate them, to have them hung in the place I was making my own.

“So what did you think, then? About... About it all.”

“I think they look like a love letter. To the town, of course,” I amend.

He scoffs. “And to you. But you know that.”

I gnaw on my bottom lip, hoping to keep it from trembling. The familiar stinging behind my eyes grows uncomfortable, so I look away.

“I guess it was.” Past. Gone. In that moment, we loved each other. But now? Now it’s just me, standing in front of a boy, not asking him to love her. Because I don’t deserve it after everything.

I feel his hand come under my chin, he tilts my face back to his. “Show me the rest of your bookstore?”

I sniffle and nod, smiling as best I can. “Of course.”

So I give him a tour, leading him through the crowd, stopping every so often to greet people. I show Knox the punny way I classified each bay (“metaphors be with you” for fantasy, “kiss and tale” for romance, etc), and get a “Holy shit that’s genius” from him.