Page 69 of Revere: A Legacy Novel

He didn’t push or ask.

Then, he looked down again. “Why a cross like that?”

Catherine swallowed the nerves in her throat. “Reminded me of the one you had drawn on the same spot once.”

“I remember that. Black Sharpie. Nosy girls all around. My birthday.”

Her laughter felt light when it escaped. “Yeah.”

“I thought … I don’t know, maybe to remind you of why.”

“It wasn’t because of you. It’s far easier for everyone else to feel guilt for someone else’s choice when it comes to suicide, but you don’t have to feel that at all, Cross.”

“Easier said than done, my girl.”

My girl.

Catherine let the invisible butterflies beat inside her belly. She had never felt that with anyone else—only ever Cross. Sometimes, he hadn’t even needed to do anything but look at her and she would feel it.

It didn’t seem to have changed.

She liked that.

A lot.

“It did remind me of you, though,” Catherine admitted. “That was another reason why I chose it.”

“Oh?”

“I got the tattoo done a year after I made the attempt. Months after I went back to see you and found you gone.”

Cross looked away.

Catherine kept talking. “I got the cross done after all of that because a part of me was still holding onto a part of you.”

His fingers tightened around hers. She answered that back with her own squeeze.

“Do you want to do something?” Cross asked. “Go somewhere, maybe?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Something.”

“Sure.”

Movement in the next booth quieted them both. Kenna and the girl’s mother shrugged on their jackets and turned to head out of the café. Not before Kenna stopped at Cross’s side, though. She beamed up at him. He smiled back.

“Here you go,” the girl said, holding out a napkin for him.

Cross took it. “Thank you.”

“Be good and go to school,” Kenna told him.

“I will.”

The girl’s mother laughed, and tugged her daughter along.

Cross looked at the napkin, and then set it on the table. He pushed it across to Catherine for her to see, too. The messy handwriting and shaky hearts made Catherine smile.