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Persuasion by Jane Austen:
“But when pain is over, the remembrance of it often becomes a pleasure.” Do you believe this, Tenleigh?—KB
I leaned back on the library bookshelf and put my pen to my lips, considering. Finally, I wrote:
I think that when enough time has passed, when you’ve survived that which you didn’t imagine you could, there’s a dignity in that. Something you can own. A pride in knowing the pain made you stronger. The pain made you fight to succeed. Someday, when I’m living my dreams, I’m going to think of all the things that broke my heart and I’m going to be thankful for them.—TF
Even you, Kyland.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Kyland
Things were out of hand with Tenleigh. I couldn’t stop myself from craving her—her voice, her thoughts, her laughter, her smell, her taste, her delectable body, her lips—just her. I’d done the exact thing I’d vowed not to do—I’d formed an attachment that I wouldn’t be able to simply leave behind in a couple months. An attachment? Hell, I was practically obsessed with her. I was screwed, completely royally screwed. And yet I would leave her behind. That’s exactly what I’d do. Because anything else was unthinkable. I felt like I was drowning in her, and just like a drowning person, my instinct was to thrash and resist—fight. Fight this thing that had taken over my body and my heart. Fight her. I needed to begin spending less time with her to soften the eventual blow. For her, but mostly, for me.
I sat staring blindly out at the town below from the hill Tenleigh and I had sledded on months before…the day I’d started something with her, there was no turning back from.
From here, the town far below looked like it could offer a life to Tenleigh and me. From here, you couldn’t see the garbage and the poverty, the misery, and the unspeakable things that went on behind closed doors in the dark of the night. I put my head in my hands and raked my fingers through my hair. I was crumbling.
“You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope.”
Oh yes.
I had read those words in Persuasion and I’d almost repeated them to her as I gazed at her tender face, her lips swollen and red with my kisses, her eyes full of what I knew was love. I’d stopped myself. It wouldn’t be fair. I’d let her in, in ways I’d never let anyone in. But I hadn’t made love to her. And I hadn’t told her I loved her or let her say it to me, even if it was clear on her face. I vowed to let that be the barrier between us that would allow me to walk out of here with at least a part of my heart intact, still in possession of at least one part of me she didn’t own. That’d be the part that would spur my feet forward, away.
I had tried so hard to resist her, but I was too weak and too selfish. And now we were both going to pay the price when I left.
Maybe we could be together…someday. Someday when I’d seen the world, when I’d made something of myself, when I’d found out what type of life I could have away from here. There had to be places filled with happiness, with hope. Although, it didn’t escape me that Tenleigh had given me just a little bit of that back. For so very, very long, I’d pushed the memories of my parents and Silas away. They were too painful, filled with too much grief. And with the bad, I’d had to push away the good. I couldn’t separate them in my mind. But then she’d come along, and she’d helped me do that…somehow without even meaning to. And now these hills felt different for the first time in four years. They’d started whispering to me again, the way they did when I was a little boy. It was a feeling, more than a sound. But I pushed it away. These hills should know I was leaving too.
A few weeks ago when I’d been walking home from school, I’d caught sight of a bunny scurrying under a bush, and a memory hit me all at once, so suddenly that I halted and stood there staring off into the woods as if I’d been hit over the head.
One year when I was about ten and Silas was fifteen, we had seen an injured baby bunny hopping across the road. We’d caught it and brought it home, keeping it in the old shed behind our house. We fed it milk from an eye dropper and, eventually, soft vegetables. We named him Bugs, and once he got strong enough, we let him out of the shed, dropping him off on the side of the road near where we’d found him. Silas had said that he’d have a better chance of finding his bunny family that way. I’d cried and Silas had called me a big ol’ baby, but he’d put his arm around my shoulders as we’d walked back home.
