Page 49 of Broken Bonds

“Know what that is?” he asks, his voice causing a shiver to run down my skin.

“It’s a whirring sound,” I can hardly answer. I’m out of breath.

“What else?” he asks, bringing his mouth to my shoulder. God, stop doing that, or I’ll never leave. I’m about to turn around and start begging to forget about all this nonsense.

“It’s alive?”

“Yes, it’s alive.”

“Lionel Kral, for your sake, I hope you aren’t putting any filthy animal close to me.”

He laughs softly, this time giving me a couple of kisses on the shoulder.

The emotion is so great that it’s impossible not to notice.

“It’s the ocean, Stella, take it in your hands.”

I raise my right hand to feel what is next to my ear. His fingers touch mine. Yes, it’s alive, and I don’t mean the ocean.

Something pulses between us, letting us know it’s there. Refusing to die.

“I want you to take the ocean with you and that every time you listen to it, you think of me because without a doubt, every time I see the ocean from my window, I will be thinking of you. Legends say that the ocean’s spirit is trapped in these,” he says, putting a shell in my hands. Of course, I had seen one before, I don’t live under a rock, but I had never stopped to listen to it, much less had an idea of the existence of a legend. “Now you can take it wherever you go.”

A lump of tears tightens in my throat, I’m about to break.

What I heard was the sound of the waves, what I had read is true.

Magic exists, and I have it here, very close, so much so that I can touch it.

But more than that, I have to take the steps.

I’m the one who should do it.

I’ve never felt so powerful and so scared, all at the same time. Emotions aren’t logical, it’s about feelings. You don’t have to look for an explanation because there isn’t one.

The heart doesn’t understand schedules or deadlines on the calendar.

Love does. And in a different way, I feel it right now.

It’s new and flimsy, sprouting from the ground like a seed. We are both going to need to take care of it, I think we can do it.

Because we both want it to work.

“Lionel,” I call his name as I turn to face him.

When the chocolate in his eyes locks on the gray of mine, I feel the world disappear. The sky and the ocean don’t matter.

The vastness has become insignificant.

“Lionel, I don’t want to go,” I say quietly, I’m surprised that he heard me. I’m sure he has, because his eyes widen.

“Then don’t go,” he replies.

“You want me to stay?” Like I said before, we need to make this decision together.

“I’ve been asking you to stay since I woke up at the hospital.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

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