AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He wrapped his arms around my shoulders. “I was thinking of opening a photo and art gallery. Highlighting local artists and unique mediums. Focusing on art that is centered around nature. Maybe raise money for charities supporting environmental efforts and ocean conservation.” He chuckled into my hair. “I’ve been thinking about it for a while. It’ll be a long time coming because I have no idea what it takes to make it happen, but I’ll figure it out.”
I whipped around in his arms and looked up at him. His eyes were soft and shining. Sparkling with every color that has ever existed before and will ever exist again. “I think that’s perfect.” His lips tilted up intothatgrin. “When did you have the time to have that made?” I asked, nodding back towards the canvas.
“I’ve been working on it for weeks. I finished it a couple of nights ago. I called Dom while I was driving down here and asked him to go get it printed for me and drop it off here. I knew as soon as I reached you, I wanted to bring you here. Show you this. I don’t know how else to show you what you’re worth to me. You have inspired all of it.” One rogue tear fell down my cheek and dripped into my neck. He folded me into his chest, his arms smothering me entirely and in the best way possible. “Pep,” he whispered. “You know what my soulmate theory is?”
Before I could ask, he continued, “I don’t believe soulmates are two halves of the same thing. Our souls are whole all on their own. Soulmates are two just souls who complement each other– that make each other better. They are built just as much as they are destined. And if we keep going on like this, just believing that the Universe is going to return us to each other every time we drift apart, we’re going to fail. We’re already failing.
“I need you to trust me. I need you to stop running away. This isn’t the last time we’ll fight. It’s not the last time we’ll be tested. You can run from everything else in life, as long as you’re runningtome. I promised you I’d catch you when you fell, and I will. Always. But you’ve got to promise me you won’t run the moment your feet hit the ground.”
I pulled back, bringing my hand to rest on his cheek. His eyes were misting, but he wouldn’t allow them to spill over as mine now were. “I’m sorry I lied to you. I never should have. But you have to understand where my head was at. When I left Oxford, Ihatedmyself. I truly hated myself. If you would’ve asked me six months ago to tell you one thing about myself I loved, I wouldn’t have been able to. I blamed myself for everything.” He opened his mouth but I held my hand up to let him know I wasn’t finished. “So, when you showed back up in my life, with these memories of me as a completely different person than who I was now, I didn’t want you to know the truth. I kept all of it hidden, and I tried to become the person you had known again. The person I thought you could love. I didn’t believe that someone like you could ever love the person I thought I had become. I didn’t think pure light could love pure dark.
“I never cared about crawling back to my true self until you came back. You made me want that. You made me want to find her. To heal and understand my past, to move forward from it. But it took me so long to get there, and I had already been lying, and the farther I fell into love with you, the harder it was to let go and tell you the truth. I thought you wouldn’t see past it. You’d see the person I’d become and you wouldn’t be able to believe I could find myself again. I was afraid you’d give up on me.”
He swiped his thumbs underneath my eyes. “I wouldn’t. I won’t. I’m sorry I didn’t make that clearer. That I let my emotions get the best of me. That I didn’t hold onto that tether when I started drowning.” He sighed. “That I let you float away too.”
“We both let go,” I whispered. “Never again.”
“Never again,” he promised.
I ran my thumb along his cheek, searching for the words I couldn’t find.
They didn’t exist. I found the only three that could begin to express the way I felt.
“I love you.”
His lips met mine in a kiss that was deep, and soft, and warm. “I love you, Pep.”
When he pulled away, I spun back around to look at the canvas again. I squatted down on the ground and ran my hand across my own face. It was smooth, but looked textured. He said it’d taken him weeks to create. I thought about all the late nights he was awake working on it while I was sleeping. The photo he had of me on his computer, and how it was the same one he was creating. I wondered if he, like myself, was so full of all the emotions that came with loving someone so intensely that he just needed to let it spill out. I wondered if this was the product of that.
For the first time, I felt the courage to finally show him the product of all my emotions too.
“We need to go back to my apartment,” I said. I stood up and turned back at him.
“Right now?”
I nodded, smiling.
? ? ?
Ithrew open the door to my apartment to find my siblings standing around the kitchen counter stuffing their faces with Chinese takeout. They both paused mid-bite and stared past me as Carter shut the door behind him.
“I’m going to need you guys to go anywhere else. For a while.”
Easton scrunched his nose. “Really, Penelope?I’m eating.”
I smirked. “Eat somewhere else.”
Maddie had already begun to place the food back into the bag and slip on her shoes. Easton scoffed but followed suit. “When can we come back?” she asked.
“An hour.”
Carter’s arm appeared at my waist, his lips at my cheek. “Better make it two.”
“Oh God,” Easton muttered.
They gathered their things and headed toward the door. Easton stopped in front of Carter, and I stepped to the side. Easton’s face was a hard line, where Carter’s looked almost timid. Finally, Easton smirked, and to my disbelief, pulled Carter in for a hug. As he pulled back, Easton slapped Carter’s cheek playfully. “I’m not going to get all cliche here, but if you ever pull some stupid shit like that again– if you tell her anything other than how beautiful, and smart, and good she is, I’ll kill ya.”
I swallowed hard.
