Page 51 of Fated

That’s the answer. This island is my dream and he isn’t leaving it. As long as I’m here, he’ll be here too.

“I’ll stay,” I tell him, whispering over the waves and the cresting music. “I think I like you.” I step closer, bridging the gap between us. The heat of him swirls around me. I ride on the current of it, the taut vibration tugging me closer. “I’ll stay so I can learn more about you.”

“You already know everything about me.” His eyes are fathomless and unreadable.

“Not true. I don’t know anything about you.”

“Do you want to dance?” he asks, and I realize we’re already moving toward each other and my hands are already searching for his.

When I clasp him and settle against the hard line of his abdomen, the tension rolls out of me. I fold into him and rest my head against his shoulder. He lets out a shuddering breath, and it shifts my hair and caresses my neck.

I wonder what it would be like to lie down in the sand with him, to have the scratch of the sand abrade my back and legs as his mouth treads softly over my skin. I think I would glow as hot as the fire nearby.

I wonder. I wonder what he thinks about. I wonder what he does. I wonder who he is. I wonder if people in dreams also dream.

“There’s something different about you today,” he says, and when I look up at him he seems shocked he said that out loud.

Maybe he is. It wasn’t thought-out, only felt.

“Are you real? Do you feel alive?” I ask.

He smiles then glances across the beach at Amy, hunched over her book. “I feel alive some days more than others. I used to chase the gold to feel alive. Then ... you know. Now I’m here.”

“What’s the gold?”

He laughs and pulls me tighter against him. A glow flows over me like sunlight spreading over the Alps in the morning, brushing them in molten light.

“How about you? Do you feel alive?”

I consider his question.

Have I been living my life, or have I been living a half-life?

I think my mum would say I’ve only been half-alive. If you don’t let yourself experience passion and love, joy and sorrow, then it’s a half-life, isn’t it?

If you’re always caught at the edge of the water or caught in the shadow between the light and the dark, never fully committing to one or the other, then ... you’re not living. You’re only watching life pass you by.

I love Mila. I love my brother. I love Max as a friend. But I never let myself venture beyond those safe color-inside-the-lines forms of love. So do I feel alive?

It’s uncanny that this dream, this moment, feels rich with life.

Rich with possibility.

Another firework explodes over the ocean, and then another, and another, the loud pops echoing over the music. The sky lights and white sparks stream over us.

Finally, I tilt my chin and look into McCormick’s eyes.

“I’d like to feel alive,” I admit, and then, “I think I can. With you.”

At that we stop dancing, held still in the pregnant heat of the night. He stares down at me as if he’s been caught off-guard by my statement, as if he doesn’t quite believe me but wants very badly to let go of his doubt and say yes. Yes to whatever, to anything. To this moment.

“Kiss me?” I pull my bottom lip between my teeth and McCormick follows the dragging motion. The breeze stirs between us, bringing up smoke and sea.

“Please,” I say.

And then, after a breath-held moment full of tension and struggle, McCormick tilts his head and raggedly says, “You’re certain?”

“Yes.Yes.”

---