Page 60 of Sweet Silver Bells
She’s ashamed.
“What?” She took a step back. “What does the expression on your face mean?”
Hunter shook his head and ran his hand through his hair, wincing, forgetting about his missing fingernails.
“Everything you say, whenever you open those beautiful lips, I somehow fall even harder for you.”
Olivia let out a cry, burying her face in her hands again. “You’re not angry? You’re not sending me away?”
Hunter shook his head and brought Olivia into his chest, his arms wrapped around her tightly. “I don’t think I could send you away.”
Olivia sniffed, “You’re right. I wouldn’t let you.”
Though it was a very real threat, Hunter reveled in it. He somehow needed her, and she seemed to need him. It was that simple, their differences aside.
“Who did I bury, Olivia?”
Her body shuddered under his weight until he could feel her back expanding and contracting, her breath steadying as she gathered the nerve to say.
Ages, multiple lives where their souls still connected, must have passed by as Hunter waited, until Olivia had finally found it, that courage. Hunter’s eyes widened, his body began totremble when the words came out of her mouth, finalizing it, knowing that it could never be repaired.
“The television.”
Laughter erupted from him. He couldn’t remember the last time he had laughed like that, felt joy and relief in a way where he felt ten years younger, where he could go through the darkest depths of hell with a smile, knowing that this happiness, this purest, most innocent sensation pulsed through him.
He was smiling like an idiot as he marveled at her confusion.
“I dug a grave with my bare hands in the snow, in the frozen dirt, for my television?”
Olivia nodded, her face solemn, untrusting of Hunter’s grace.
“Is the tree happier at least?”
She considered, looking at the bare-branched dark tree hovering too close to his roof, promising a gutter filled with leaves this next fall.
“It certainly appreciates it,” she said. “But I expect you’ll have a long way to go before happiness is its reality.”
“Will you help me get there?”
This made her smile. He would talk about trees all day if that were what stopped the tears.
“I will.”
Hunter’s phone chimed. Then it chimed again. And again.
I hate group texts.
He pulled it out of his back pocket, impressed that it hadn’t somehow been buried with the television since it rarely could stay in his pocket, and stared at the unlocked screen.
Celia 4: 54 pm:
See you all in an hour.
Darius 4:55 pm:
Do I still have to meet Tom?
Nina 4:56 pm:
