Page 38 of Where the Little Birds Are (Little Bird Duet 2)

Sitting on the edge of my desk, Corbin turns the pages of the notebook he gave me for Christmas in high school and begins reading from it. “’I was stupid. Stupid for the way I loved so easily, hoped too deeply, and expected too blindly. I was naive for feeling so carefree, smiling so widely with a simple text, and losing myself so quickly to a man I knew would leave me one day.’”

He pauses, running his fingers down the page before continuing. “’It was silly to believe that things would be different than any other heartache humans experience. I’d been warned, but I ignored the signs. All or nothing—that’s what I gave. He took all. I got nothing.’”

I know for a fact that the ink on the page is smudged and faded in certain parts. To the bottom right is the faintest water stain in the form of a small tear droplet, and I wonder if he can feel my pain if he touches it.

“’And through it all,’” he reads through a hollow voice that wavers, “’I wonder, why not me? I inspect my flaws because there are a lot of them and study my mannerisms because they’re vast. And I think … it was always meant to be this way. Lonely. Trying. Inevitable.’”

Pressing my lips together, I think of the last word and swallow my emotions. Inevitable. Ironic how that word likes to reappear between us—the same word with two different contexts.

“I don’t remember that in the script,” he finally says, clearing h

is throat.

I play with the silver bow in my hands, running my fingers over it without looking at Corbin despite the way he stares. “It didn’t get added into the book.”

“Why not?”

My eyes trail over to him slowly, surely the dark brown color of them wary and distant as we lock gazes. “That was the first thing I wrote when I realized you weren’t coming back. My heart hurt from thinking about you and my eyes hurt from crying all the time. Mom told me to write to make myself feel better, so I did. I bled onto that page with anger and betrayal because you left me like everyone said you would. I put myself in the position to be broken like Gavin always said I’d be. I was angry with myself. I just felt so stupid.”

He abruptly closes the notebook and squats in front of me, brushing hair behind my ear that escaped my messy updo. “I’m sorry. I know those words don’t mean much now, but I am for what it’s worth.”

I lean into my palm. “That notebook went everywhere with me. Every time I thought of one-liners or quotes or scenes, I’d stop whatever I was doing to jot it down. I did what Jamie told me when we met. I wrote a story worth telling, putting it all down no matter how much it hurt. And you know what?”

I move my head away from his touch as I place the silver bow on the carpet and pick up a plastic container. Opening it, I reveal the origami corsage from winter formal. “I used writing as an outlet. We both succumbed to our vices.”

He repositions to sit down beside me, grazing his fingertips across the old relic like he can’t believe I’ve kept it. Honestly, I can’t believe I was strong enough to either. “I wouldn’t exactly call writing a vice.”

I set the bird down and rummage through my other saved memories. “It is when you use it like I do.” I laugh softly and grab the same worn Stephen King book I used to read to him at night like he’d ask me to. “Writing was supposed to be an escape. It was meant to let me get my feelings out in a therapeutic way so I could move on. And instead, I wrote about the very thing I was supposed to forget.”

He grabs the book from me and flips through the pages, seeing the random notes littering the margins. I hated when he wrote in it, so it became a habit of his just to irritate me.

“You did what you had to do,” is what he thinks to answer, closing the book and resting it in his lap. I stop digging in the bin, soaking up his words. “I think what you did was the best thing you could have done. Think about it, Little Bird. The reason so many people resonate with your characters is because there are thousands of people just like Beck and Ryker out there. You gave your readers an outlet too.”

Drawing in my bottom lip, I give him the tiniest shrug. I know he’s right, but something is holding me back from admitting it. “Tell me why you gave them a happy ending. Explain to me why you made them go through years of never knowing how to be happy, just to come full circle and get that happiness.”

My eyes focus on the plastic bin.

“Kinley,” he presses.

Hands going to my hair, I pull it out of the ponytail and redo it into a messy bun so it’s out of my face. “A lot of reasons. I wanted to give people hope that you could still find that person meant for you even after the trials you face together. I wanted to show that relationships aren’t some clear, clean thing. Sometimes you do bad things to get what you want and end with the person you’re determined to have. And…”

His brows raise.

“And I wanted to live out the ending I’d dreamt for us in any form I could,” I add in an audible tone.

Moving the book off his lap, he reaches forward and pulls me into him. I nearly topple over but catch myself on his shoulders. He grins and tugs me onto his lap, so I’m sitting sideways. His lips find my jaw, peppering kisses along the edge until his teeth nip my earlobe.

I inhale sharply when he brushes his lips against my ear and whispers, “We were always meant to get there, Little Bird. It just took us some time.”

Squirming from the heat between my thighs, I lift and swing one leg over his lap to straddle him. His hands find my sides, resting on my waist, as I wrap my arms around his neck.

Gnawing on my lip for a moment, I say, “This wasn’t exactly the ending I envisioned for us, Corbin.” I look around the room before meeting his curious eyes. “Sitting on your lap in the middle of my office, four months pregnant, wondering what’s going to happen when the truth comes out. Will our parents freak? Will they judge us? Forgive us? What is Lena going to say or do? How are our careers going to be impacted by it? I have so many questions in my head that are giving me a headache.”

“We’ll figure those out together.” His fingers twitch into my sides as he draws my lips toward his. “Let me help you relax, Little Bird. No thinking. Just us.”

“Maybe I’m afraid of us.”

He hums against my lips, parting them to taste me. I don’t pull back, just tighten my hold around him and deepen the kiss. Once upon a time this intimacy wouldn’t have come with consequences, but we’re too far gone to care.

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