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Then he noticed the figure I was staring at.
“Oh,” he said. “I… guess I’ll catch you some other time. Hopefully not too soon, though. You don’t get many Get Out Of Jail free cards with this kind of thing.”
I waited for him to leave before I spoke.
“I thought you hated that bag?” I said.
She tucked it under her arm.
“It grows on you,” she said.
“One thing’s for sure,” I said. “The skin won’t be growing on the creature it was taken from.”
My joke fell flat. Even I didn’t laugh.
“I heard what you did,” Bianca said. “It was… nuts.”
“Yeah. I wouldn’t suggest it. You know, I was beginning to think you might be a figment of my imagination. I had a hell of a time trying to convince them you were real.”
“Sorry,” she said. “I changed my mind about leaving.”
“So, you didn’t bother getting onboard the ship?” I said. “Even after you checked in?”
“I couldn’t do it,” she said. “I went and had a cup of tea and thought about everything I’d been through. The best bits and the worst. And I realized I didn’t want it to end. I didn’t want to go back to Earth. Not yet, anyway.”
“What was your plan?”
“Get another job as a governess, maybe come by and see Cleb now and then.”
Her eyes flicked up to mine.
“And you,” she said. “If you’d like.”
“I wouldn’t like it,” I said.
Her expression fell.
“Oh,” she said. “I thought after your crazy act of—”
“I would love it,” I completed.
I floated toward her on what might have been clouds. I took her face in my hands and looked deep in her eyes. She was desperate, as emotional as I was. I wrapped my arms around her and breathed her in.
“I’m so glad you didn’t get on the ship,” I said. “I would have preferred to have known you didn’t get on the ship, of course, but still, it was worth it. It was worth it just to see you again.
“The truth is, I love the person I am with you. I love the kind of man you make me want to be. Before you came, I was a workaholic and I didn’t even appreciate the one person in my life who loved me the most. Cleb. You made me see what a fool I’d been.
“You did that. You opened my eyes to these things because you see the world differently to the way I did. You give me a reason to be on this Godforsaken rock out in the middle of nowhere.”
I shook my head.
“I’m no good at these kinds of things,” I said.
“Keep going,” she said.
Her eyes pierced me to my soul, and I knew without a doubt I would never be apart from her again.
“What I’m trying to say, in a roundabout way is…” I said. “You complete me.”
