Page 68 of P.S. It’s Always Been You
I noodle on her point for a few seconds, humming. “You may be right. Maybe that’s why I haven’t gone to either place.”
She sets a hand on my thigh, resting it there, and I can’t look away from her hand on me as she talks. “You don’t want to see things,” she says. “You want to do things. You didn’t go to Svalbard to see polar bears. You went there to trek across icebergs. You didn’t go to Indonesia to take photos of the Mount Kerinci volcano. You went to hike up it, even though it might have erupted. You can’t slow down.”
“You think I can’t?” I ask as I stare at her hand on my leg, wondering if she placed it there out of a long-ago habit, or if this is our new normal after last night?
“No. You can’t, and you know it. It’s who you are. It’s your intrinsic core self.”
“And your intrinsic core self is that woman in the shop, driven to understand the significance of a hairbrush.” I settle my hand over hers, threading our fingers together. She lets me, opening easily, and this feels important. A gesture that means the something between us encompasses more than last night. It’s about holding hands on a bench. It’s about understanding each other. It’s about savoring every second we’re together.
She gasps, letting go of my hand and snapping me out of my head. “The hairbrush! The globe! How did I not see this at first?” She grabs my arm, squeezing hard. “The globe in the Exploration Society. It has to be the one they talked about in the letter, where they put their hands on the globe and talked about all the places they wanted to go, and then kissed across the world.”
A smile ignites inside me. This woman. The way her mind works. “You’re brilliant. Everything has been hidden in things that mattered to them. The next one must be too. But in what? Not a moon pie, we’ve learned.”
“They hid the letters in places that would last. Did you hear Pat say he’d owned the shop forever? I bet they hid it in his shop because they knew he’d never be kicked out, since he owns it. So, the last one has to be someplace similar. Except I don’t think we’ll know till we figure out more of the clue. We’ll put our heads together today as we go to the house. It starts with ‘last show.’ They clearly performed again, no matter what Pat says.” She grabs my knee. “Is this the miracle knee?”
“It’s magic,” I say with a crooked grin.
“You are such a lucky bastard. You don’t even have a single wound.”
“I have scars from plenty of other near misses; rockfalls; and close escapes from bears, gators, and very angry rivers, thank you very much.”
“Again, lucky bastard.” She takes a beat, then her lips curve up. “But that’s a good thing. I’m glad you’re able to run from bears and rivers. I want you to do those crazy things.”
“You do?” I ask because . . . holy shit, she does? No one has ever wanted me to. No one in my life sees it this way.
“Of course.” She’s matter-of-fact about it. “Those crazy things make you happy. They make you you.”
And that’s when I know.
That’s when I’m certain. This is my second chance. This is my mulligan, and I can’t let it pass me by.
“Let’s do the road trip. Then we’ll get on a flight to Paris. We’ll go to Florence.” I swear, a ray of sunlight bursts in my chest. I can see it so clearly, can picture her there, picture us everywhere. I don’t know how, but we’ll figure it out.
“We?” Her eyes are full of question marks.
“We. I’ll take you everywhere,” I say, and yes, this is how we do it. We write a new adventure. This is my second chance at what I botched ten years ago.
“Hunter,” she says, and the message in my name is clear—Don’t go there unless you want to stay there.
“I mean it,” I say firmly, gripping her hand.
She shakes her head. “I don’t want to do this right now.”
“When, then? When can we get into this?”
She nibbles on the corner of her lips. “You can’t just say all these things. This is crazy. We’re not those people.”
“We’re different people. We’re these people.” I can’t live without the woman I regret leaving. I can’t stand not loving her. I slide a hand into her hair, look her in the eyes, and say, “We can do this, because I’m in love with you, Presley.”
31
Presley
No way.
There is no way he said what I think he said.
I’m dreaming. I’m hallucinating.
Perhaps I have a fever. I’m a little warm. Maybe my temperature has spiked to 104.
“How?” I ask, shaky. It’s all I can say. All I can think.
