Chapter 98

The One Where He’s Caught

NATE

When I awoke yesterday, I had a feeling. I can’t really explain it, but I just felt like something was different. This morning, it was the same. The feeling hasn’t died, despite the sleep.

It also hasn’t resulted in anything actually being different.

That’s why it confuses me so much.

It’s officially been over five months since I was last able to see Arielle—with her being aware of that fact. It’s been that fucking long since the accident and my faked death. Since I’ve been able to touch Arielle, talk to her face to face. Since being able to actually go outside like a normal human being.

It’s been a few weeks since the night at the club and I was lucky that Hayes never caught on. Wherever he went for the night, he ended up actually staying away till the next day so everything went better than I ever expected.

Mauna and Storm have been nonstop texting since and it’s wonderful. I’ve teased her about imagining me—although she doesn’t know it’s me she confessed to—while fucking James. We’ve chatted about life and watched a few movies together while messaging. She seems to be doing a hell of a lot better. Like, leagues and bounds above what she was even during the evening at the nightclub.

Five months is a long fucking time to be away from the woman you’re in love with. So much could’ve happened that I have no idea about.

I feel as though I’ve already begun to forget the way she smelt. The way her skin was always so soft, tempting my hands to smooth over her flesh just so I can feel it. I worry that I’m in the stages of beginning to forget the way her eyes would look when she’d cum, the way her hair would surround her like a crown when she’d swim, the way her face looked so peaceful and beautiful as she slept.

It’s one of the reasons I’ve been so consumed with dreams of her. Drawing her. Writing little thoughts and poems in the journal I plan to gift her.

168 Days Without Her

This is hell.

There is no other way to describe it.

I can’t help but think that the world agrees with me. There’s been maybe one thunderstorm since our separation, as if the sky is denying the ground of the hydration it needs, like I’m denying myself the woman I need to survive.

Sincerely, I pray that she’s doing good. She’s strong, intelligent, and I do think that this entire endeavor will only make her stronger.

I have to learn to forgive myself for this, but I’ve been unable to. Not without her forgiveness. Until she understands why I’ve done what I’ve done and we can move past it, I refuse to forgive myself. I think that I don’t have any right deciding whether I’m allowed to be exonerated or not.

One big thing I’ve grown to miss incredibly is the sound of her laugh. She had this laugh — one that was so boisterous and beautiful that it never failed to make me join her. It was intoxicating.

All I want to do is to hold her. Hold her hand. Cradle her head in my lap while we watch a movie. Trace loving and gentle shapes on the bare skin of her back as we lay in bed. Run my fingers through her hair until she falls to sleep. I miss those moments the most lately.

Even having a conversation with her. I miss being able to tease the shit out of her. The way she’d give it right back to me always drove me wild. It was fun. Sexy. Thrilling. And I miss it.

I want to go away with her again. Uninterrupted. Somewhere we can enjoy one another’s company without worry.

I often think about living somewhere rather rural — essentially the middle of nowhere — where there would be basically fuck all to do. I imagine people that choose to live in such areas have nothing to do but fuck all day long. It’s probably why they have so many children. I want that type of life for us.

It’s getting hard to speak to her as Mauna. To pretend to be someone else entirely. Even harder imagining that she may be falling in love with Mauna when he isn’t me. He’s only the littlest parts of me that happen to escape when I’m not paying attention and let my guard down.

I still can’t figure out something to gift her when this is all over. The longer it goes on, the harder I think it becomes to think of something sufficient. Because the longer I’m here, the less likely she is to forgive me.

I don’t want to give her something materialistic. She isn’t a materialistic person. I want something meaningful. Something that she can keep forever and show our children thirty years from now when they’re getting married and she wants to tell them stories of our love.

I don’t think there’s anything sufficient. What we have is so truly rare, that it can’t be replicated. It isn’t even possible to attempt to explain it. There just aren’t words.

I love her.

I love you.

Forever.

It isn’t a coincidence that we were born around the same time. That we both ended up in the same city, doing the same thing. It isn’t happenstance that we were both racing at the same place during the same time. None of it can be ignored. It was fate. Like ancient stories of legends, this was fucking fate. We were destined to find solace in one another.

When I was created, half my heart and soul was extracted from me.

When she was created, that half was inserted into the depths of her chest.

I spent the first twenty some-odd years of my life, like a dehydrated and starving man wandering the desert, looking for what I was missing. The thing was, I didn’t know what was absent. It wasn’t until I met her that I finally figured it out.

I finally felt whole.

I’d found home.

In you.

I can feel that my journal entries are becoming more desperate.

Because I am.

This is becoming so excessively long. I don’t fucking know who I am anymore. I feel lost. Like the wandering man I mention in my notes to Arielle—I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing anymore. As if I’m making pointless circles without any sort of sign or signal of how to make it end.

It doesn’t help that thoughts of Arielle and James are still swirling. In my darker moments, I think negatively of their connection.

It’s entirely possible that the man I’d dreamt of all those weeks ago—the one who Arielle had said I love you to—was James. Yes, he has tattoos, but none on his hands.

To add to it, he’s similar to me in many ways. Part of me believes that she sees a bit of me in him. I don’t know whether that’s a good or bad thing. Perhaps she’ll realize that he’s essentially the best of both worlds—he’s like me, yet he doesn’t come with all the drama.

Since apparently, Ezra appears to be good with him and just not me.

Why the fuck is that?

As much as it pains me to think about Arielle with James, I don’t hate the guy. Am I envious and jealous that he can be with her without some obsessive fucking hate train from Ezra Sullivan? Of course I am. However, if I push my jealousy aside, I can’t exactly say anything bad about the guy. He seems to care for her and he treats her good.

A lot of people aren’t capable of caring for a woman like Arielle. A woman brave enough to have fought her way through plenty of dark, twisted, fucked up things. She’s strong. The strongest person I’ve ever known and that can be intimidating to a lot of people. I just hope that James realizes what he has and doesn’t take a moment with her for granted.