When we got back from our getaway, I had a feeling that all was right with the world. I felt a type of way I hadn’t felt in weeks due to the terrors that had been hunting us. It felt nice to have peaceful and calm thoughts.
That evening, when the sun set into the horizon and colored the skies indigo and rose, Caspian did something that I never imagined he would every do while he was with me.. We'd been hurt and fought too much at each other—too much having survived atrocities, too much struggling—to have a chance at a future free of the venom of the past seem too fragile to grasp. And yet we stood there, on the edge of something more.
Caspian swept me silent from the villa and led me to the car with all the care in the world that he could muster.. His hold was firm in mine, but I could sense a tremble of tension and frailty in his fingers. We drove silent on winding country roads, the flashing city lights behind us disappearing into the golden glow of the countryside. The world outside us changed: fields lay out, then dark woods, then finally we arrived at an open area at the border of an old forest. It was breathtaking beautiful and it left me speechless.
There was a tiny secret lake in front of me, glassy level and silvered, with a star-filled sky above. There was an old pavilion of stone in the center of the clearing—broken arches and pillars moss-covered with threads of lost centuries. A moment that existed in suspended time, a secret heaven that was its own soft enchantment. I breathed cold air into my windpipe when I swallowed it whole, the tranquility of the photo weighed against our own tense history.
Caspian leaned on the rim of the glade. He returned to me gradually, his eyes hot and dominant under the shifting moonlight. There was nothing in his eyes—a restraint that I had never in the way of habit seen—nothing that softened the hard set of his face but one thing I knew for sure was that I was madly in love with that face and he also was madly in love with me. We stood there just long enough for what felt an appallingly long moment, the only sounds the distant sigh of leaves and the soft lap of water on the shore.
Lily, he said at last, his voice gruff and slightly hesitant, as if what he had to say condemned his own soul. "I have something I have to tell you."
I stepped towards him, my heart thudding in my chest. "What is it, Cass?" I breathed, my voice no louder than a mouse in the chill night air.
He stopped, drawing a lungful of air into his chest. Eyes never leaving mine. "I. I didn't know that I was supposed to be able to be happy. That I was destined to exist in the shadows of my own past, reminded constantly by error and regret." Unshed tears welled in his eyes as he went on, "But with you, Lily, I've discovered that I can forge an alternative path, with you I have learned that love can be enjoyed by anyone no matter how dark your life or the life you lived is”.
I may be loved and love and no longer be afraid. I love you—whole and unbroken.
Those words he'd spoken with a wild passion shook through him left me speechless. I glimpsed the man behind the wounds then—a man who'd worked so realistically hard to keep my alive that he'd built a fortress in his heart, now laid waste. Caspian's intense gaze pierced mine, seeking, pleading, and ultimately accepting all at once. It was a look that said, “I’m done running from my demons. I’m ready to stand in the light with you. I am ready to love you with all of my heart until the end of our time on earth”.
I sat up and ran my fingers over the shape of his cheek, soaking up the warmth in his skin and the still sensitive spot there. "Cass," I whispered, with thick and genuine emotion in my voice, "I never was the sort of person who thinks love occurs in perfection—it's struggling through the imperfections together. I choose you too, every day, after hurt and yesterday." You're my heart, and I don't fear the scars.
One unreleased tear trickled down his face as he grinned—a little, happy grin that lit up his eyes. "You can't even attempt to understand what my words mean to you," he panted, his voice trembling with wonder and joy. "For all those years, I thought that I was going to spend them alone through all this suffering. But you've taught me that even in the deepest wounds, you can heal when you throw open the light."
And in the moonlit glade of the forest, where darkness fell like a velvet blanket over us, Caspian moved forward and took me into his arms. His arms were encircling tightly but gently, as if wrapping and covering me—a silent promise that however much distance he'd ever followed before, he'd be coming directly to me. I leaned my forehead onto his chest and detected the gradual throb of his heart, a rhythm of symphony soothing the commotion outside us. We were there for hours thus in this secluded bower.
The pavilion behind, the lake sparkling before us, and the trees of old creaking overhead constructed a world away from yesteryear—a world in which our only concern was for one another. Caspian's hand lay against the rise of my cheek, his fingers mapping the contours of my face. Lily, I know that I have spent too many nights trembling in fear, and stashed bits of myself away from you so that you would not know precisely how shattered I am. I am not able to continue in this manner. I do not want to be the one to lose you because I was not strong enough to tell you who I truly am. I stared into his eyes, their strength and power leaving me gasping for air.
"You are not broken, Cass," I said to him, my voice firm. "You are a fighter who battled unimaginable darkness. And all of the things about you—every error, every blemish—it's made you into the man I love. I want to know all of you, even the pieces you're too scared to let me see. Because I think that if we are together, we can heal."